The Death of Christ (Part 1 of 2)

You might think that in studying about the crucifixion of Jesus in the Gospels you would find many of the gruesome details, but Luke's Gospel focuses on three aspects of the crucifixion of Jesus that are far more significant. Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg reminds us that the question for us isn't how Jesus died, but why he died. As the arms of Christ reach out and establish in this amazing scene that now we consider the gravity of our predicament and the immensity of your love, we pray that you will help us as we study the Bible, that we might understand it, and in understanding it we may live in the light of it. For we pray in Christ's name.

Amen. Well, we're at the forty-fourth verse of Luke chapter 23. Here, in a matter of just a few words, Luke describes for us the most famous and certainly the most significant death in all of human history.

And he does so with a purposeful reticence and with a perfect restraint. We've already seen, back in verse 33, that he took only three words in Greek to describe the crucifixion. And there, they crucified him.

That's all that's said. And once again, in the closing moments of the life of the Lord Jesus Christ, in the actual description of his death, there is absolutely no attempt to stir up emotion. There is no agenda, apparently, to make one's skin crawl. There are scenes that would do that for us, and indeed, this would be one of them, but the absence of description is quite striking. I've been involved in a number of dialogues concerning this issue because of the position that I have taken regarding the reticence of the gospel writers to describe for us the physicality of suffering. And one of the lines of argument has been, well, of course, everybody knew that crucifixion went down a certain road, and we don't, and that's why we need the description now.

But if you think about it, since God knew that we would be in that predicament, it's striking that he decided not to give us the description so that we would have it now at the beginning of the twenty-first century. But indeed, the restraint is purposeful, and the reticence is absolutely perfect. There is a sense in which the very simplicity of these words, the uncluttered nature of the narrative, stirs up for us thoughts that lie too deep for tears. Remember, our writer is a doctor. He has an eye for detail. He expressed this in his introduction. It was, he said, the result of careful investigation.

It was the provision of an orderly account. And it was in order that the readers may know the certainty of the things they have been taught. So this is very much to the mind, isn't it? This is not to stir up an emotional reaction, to make people feel a particular way, but Luke is writing in order that his readers may understand the nature of biblical faith. And here in this little paragraph, in the forty-sixth verse, in the final sentence of the forty-sixth verse, he gives to us in just a phrase the description of the death of Jesus. He breathed his last.

Now, I want you to notice that, first of all, and then we'll go back and deal with what precedes it, and then we will return and deal with what follows it. He breathed his last. Interestingly, the verb that he uses is not the normal verb that would be used in describing the death of an individual. In fact, none of the Gospel writers use that particular word. Not because the death of Jesus was not real, but presumably because the death of Jesus was unusual. His life was unusual, and his death was unusual too.

Think about this with me. We have observed the fact that there was, if you like, a coalition of hatred, that there was a combined sense of disparate individuals uniting in the cause of seeing Jesus put to death. But as we have watched that unfold, we have done so in light of all of the things that Jesus has said prior to that, and also in light of everything that we discover from the apostles after the resurrection of Jesus. And so the idea that the death of Jesus is simply that of a helpless victim being overwhelmed by cruel circumstances, we know just doesn't fit the facts. Because we recall that Jesus had told his disciples that he was going up to Jerusalem and that the Son of Man must suffer many things. James Stewart, the Scottish professor, said in the past, it was the necessity not of violence and constraint but of his own consuming love for men. The reason that he must suffer is because of the purpose that he was fulfilling in giving his life.

And so when you read this phrase—and it is interesting, isn't it? He breathed his last. Remember that Jesus went to the cross willingly.

He did not go there helplessly. John records the fact that Jesus had said, I freely lay down my life. No one takes it from me. I lay it down of my own free will. Now, that's unusual.

That is unusual. If you think of all of the people that you have seen in the extremity of life as they have faced death, I don't think you have ever met an individual who has spoken of it in those terms. I have the power to lay it down, and I have the power to take it again. Even those who think they're doing so by way of suicide have nothing of this calm, peaceful restfulness in approaching it. And all of the painful suffering now gives way to what is essentially a peaceful passing. He had told Mary and Joseph when they found him way back in the early chapters in the temple in Jerusalem that he had to be about his father's business, and here he is at the end of his earthly pilgrimage still about his father's business. Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. And that's really it. They crucified him. He breathed his last. Now, how are we supposed to deal with that kind of information?

What do you do? Well, you take the surrounding material and you see what light the surrounding material sheds on, if you like, the bare facts. Will you notice with me, then, first of all, three significant events? Three significant events.

They're there in the text. The first one is a total blackout. A total blackout. It was now about the sixth hour, and darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour. Right around midday, the land was swallowed up in darkness.

Now, right around the sixteenth of August, I think it was—maybe the fourteenth of August, probably the fourteenth of August—we had a blackout here in the northeast, didn't we? And it was unsettling. All of a sudden, people felt a little more vulnerable than usual. Suddenly, there was an eerie kind of darkness. And people remarked to one another, I wonder what this is about. I wonder why this is taking place.

Now, if we think, for example, that this was a routine in Jerusalem, then we're wrong, and the same kind of vulnerability, the same kind of questioning would have been going on. A lady would be doing her shopping, and her daughter would say, Mommy, why has it got dark all of a sudden? Mom, why is it still dark? Mom, is it ever going to get light again? And the mother being forced to say, Honey, I don't know. I really don't know.

I'm sure it will, but I don't know what's happening at all. Now, there may well have been some who remembered that at the arrest of Jesus, he had made this enigmatic statement, This is your hour when darkness reigns. And a few astute individuals may have suddenly fastened on the fact that Jesus had said that, and now they were in the midst of this prevailing darkness.

They probably simply wondered to themselves, I think it may be possible that this statement and this circumstance are related. Doubtless there would have been some who were able to put two and two together in terms of darkness and the Passover. Here we have the celebration of the Passover in Jerusalem.

The Jewish people have been celebrating this for hundreds of years. They recalled that the final plague before the arrival of the angel of death was that of darkness over all the land—that that had been God's last word to Pharaoh before the angel came. That on that occasion, only those who were protected by the blood of the Passover land awakened in the morning to find their firstborn still with them. And now, here, in fulfillment of that exodus, darkness precedes the sacrifice of Christ, who is the Passover Lamb. And it is as sin-bearer that Jesus enters into the presence of the sinless God, carrying with him no substitutionary sacrifice for people. How could a priest ever go before God without a sacrifice? We know that the priest had to make a sacrifice for his own sin, and then he made sacrifice for the sins of those whom he represented. But on this occasion, this priest goes into the presence of a sinless God carrying nothing.

Why? Because in this case, the priest is the victim. He carried nothing, because there was nothing he could carry, nothing he should carry, because he in himself was bearing our sins in his body on the tree. And the darkness, the spiritual darkness that engulfs Christ, is symbolized in the physical darkness that engulfs Jerusalem. Hence his cry of dereliction, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

For God had turned his face away, even as he had turned, if you like, the light of the sun away. And in words that we rehearse to our children, when they ask us about the immensity of all of this, we tell them that Jesus was forsaken in order that we might be forgiven. That there is nothing else in all of the world that is demonstrative of how real God's love is for the sinful and how real the sin of the world is to God. And the love which comes to us through what Jesus is doing here, bearing sin in all of its reality, still loves us through this and beyond this.

And this is the only love which simultaneously forgives sins and regenerates the soul. Well might the sun in darkness hide and shut his glories in, When God the mighty Maker dies, For man the creature sin. The second event we might refer to as a divine vandalism. A total blackout and a divine vandalism. Because here we have God himself desecrating the temple.

Well, there's a lot in this that we won't turn to. I'm sure there is a mysterious, almost humorous element in it, inasmuch as the great concern of the religious order was that this man was claiming he would destroy the temple and raise it again in three days, and then on the cross they'd shout it up at him, You think you're gonna destroy the temple and raise it again in three days? And then, in the midst of the darkness and the upheaval in the earth, all of a sudden the temple is desecrated by God. Now, whether it's the outer curtain or the inner curtain—you can argue about that over coffee some afternoon, it's a completely baseless argument—but whether it is the outer curtain or the inner curtain, the tearing of the curtain makes the same and obvious point. Namely, that this gigantic mechanism barred the way of men and women to God, said that there was only certain ritualistic ways in which you could meet God, certain times in which you could find God, certain individuals who might introduce you to God. In much the same way that people this morning think about religion, and rightly so. How am I going to get to God?

Well, if you go here, if you go in that room, if you say this, if you meet this person, they can perhaps give you an introduction. And these curtains were hanging there, symbolically bearing the way into the presence of God, and suddenly, Mark tells us, from the top to the bottom the curtain was torn. And in this way, God was declaring the old, established, priestly ritual for entrance into his presence abolished. Abolished. You're no longer going to have to go to a certain place.

There's no sense in which you need to go to a certain building. After the death of Jesus, following his resurrection into the realm of Pentecost, you discover that the whole orientation changes. Everything has been pointing to Jerusalem, and now everything is leading from Jerusalem—from Jerusalem to Jerusalem, Judea, and to the uttermost parts of the earth.

The orientation has now changed. And in this moment, Christ in his death is bearing the penalty of sin. He is removing the effects of sin. And while the priests go about their business of telling people how they can get where they need to be—bit like when you visit a museum with all of those blue velvet cords and stanchions everywhere, lined up like you're on a elementary school trip for the rest of your life—all of a sudden, God breaks into the middle of that and establishes a completely new one-way system.

A completely new one-way system. And yet, despite that, religious people this morning, and you are some of them, continue to fiddle around with the velvet ropes and the shibboleths and the priests and the avenues. Don't you realize that this is divine vandalism on your behalf?

The third element we might simply refer to is the grand finale, because that is surely what it is—a total blackout, a divine vandalism, and a grand finale. Jesus, verse 46, called out with a loud voice. Now, you will notice that each of the gospel writers makes something of this, and of course they should, because crucifixion was routinely a long, gradual loss of strength and consciousness. Whatever strength a victim may have had in the initial moments of their pain, if they had breath in the early hours to hurl abuse at their captors, to shout down from the cross, to engage in conversation, that would very quickly go away. And as the various functions of their body began to close in on them and close down, then their ability to think properly, their ability to process information properly, and certainly their ability to have breath to convey properly and definitely loudly would be going from them. But that's the point the gospel writers is making. The soldiers were familiar with the normal processes.

But they weren't familiar with a three-hour blackout. And as routine as crucifixion was, they were not used to somebody ending with a loud cry. And what we have here is the fact that Jesus is not going out with a whimper, but he's going out in full possession of his faculties.

And in the same way that we engage in routine things that are part and parcel of our everyday lives, and we are able to go through most of them without really paying a tremendous amount of attention, because they're so routine to us, so these soldiers would be going about their business. And then in the midst of it all, this loud cry. How unsettling it must have been for the centurion. Well, what was that?

That doesn't happen. When he went home for his tea in the evening. How was your day? Well, staggering today.

Of course, we had the blackout. Yes, says his wife, I was out with our girl, and she was inquiring, and I had no answer. Well, he said, I'm not sure I have an answer either, but I know I was at the very heart of it, and I think it has something to do with the man who was on the cross. Interestingly, his life was not ebbing away the way that it normally happens. Indeed, it appeared as though he just came to a point where he decided that it was time for him to leave.

He came to a point where he decided that his work had been accomplished, that he was done, and he said, I'm out of here. After all of the darkness and all of the dereliction, all of the pain, all of the suffering, all of the forsakenness, here we find him in closest communion with his father once again, entrusting himself into his care. Can you remember back to your childhood, when you fell asleep on a trip, and you spent the final few miles of the journey in a state of semi-consciousness, coming to, recognizing traffic lights without opening your eyes, knowing because you know the road so well, and then finally, that moment where you feel yourself being picked up out of the back seat, and you open your eyes just long enough to look up and see, It's my dad. He's got me.

I'm okay. And you entrusted yourself completely into the care of your father, and he took you to where you needed to be, and when you wakened up, you were home. That's what's happening here for Jesus. Okay, Father, it's over to you.

Let me just entrust myself to you. Incidentally, that is death for the Christian. What you fear most, you won't experience. You'll fall asleep in the arms of Jesus, and you'll waken up, and you're in your own room.

Well, this was very unsettling. Total blackout. Divine vandalism.

And what a grand finale. What it looks like for us to entrust ourselves to our loving Father, a picture of eternal comfort from today's message titled The Death of Christ. This is Truth for Life with Alistair Begg. The gospel is a message of hope. Eternal life with Jesus awaits all who believe. We're grateful to be able to proclaim this good news every day here on Truth for Life. Our mission is to teach the Bible so that those who are outside of Christ can hear the story of redemption and become committed followers of Jesus.

We do this so that those who already believe will grow in their faith, and so that local churches will be encouraged to teach the Bible faithfully and to be strengthened by hearing and studying God's Word. If that's a mission that resonates with you, we want to welcome you to come alongside the Truth Partner team here at Truth for Life. Truth Partners are the ones who bring Truth for Life to you each day by giving financially and praying for this ministry regularly. And to express our gratitude for all they make possible, Truth Partners are invited to request our monthly book recommendations with no additional donation. We select books on a wide variety of topics from many different authors. Signing up to become a Truth Partner is simple.

You can visit truthforlife.org slash truthpartner. And today the book we're recommending is a perfect supplement to what Alistair is teaching in Luke's Gospel. The book is titled The Cross in Four Words, and this book explores four themes related to God's eternal plan for salvation. The themes are freedom from sin, forgiveness through the cross, justification through Christ's sacrifice, and finding our purpose as followers of Jesus. One of the great things about this book is it draws a lot of connections from the Old Testament, stories from books like Exodus and Leviticus that point us to Jesus' finished work on the cross. We chose this book because it does a wonderful job directing our focus to all that Jesus accomplished on our behalf as we prepare for Easter. Let me mention that this is a book that Alistair recommends highly. He has said about it, this is a really helpful book that I will be sharing widely.

I read it in a single sitting and took a lot of notes. Request your copy of The Cross in Four Words online at truthforlife.org slash donate or by calling 888-588-7884. I'm Bob Lapine.

Thanks for listening. Join us again tomorrow for the conclusion of our message titled The Death of Christ. Alistair will teach us how to keep our focus in check as we tell others why Jesus came to earth. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.