Speaker 1: 0:13

Awesome. Just a couple of quick announcements. Easter is in just a couple of weeks. We're going to do three services because we're filling this place up, which is exciting, and it's going to be packed because we've got, right now, over 60 people that are going to get baptized during Easter service. So we're going to be celebrating. So if you have invited someone, then come to whichever service is most comfortable for them. We're going to make space here. We're going to fill this place up and we want you to come be a part of it. We're wrapping up this almost four-year journey through the gospel, according to Matthew, so come to that one.

Speaker 1: 0:50

If you're not bringing someone with you, if you could maybe think about getting up really early and coming to the 7 am service to make room for those who are invited. And, by the way, if you haven't invited anyone, statistics tell us that 82% of people are actually just waiting for an invitation and it's usually our hesitancy of like they'll let me know if they want to come, but just put it out there. You can invite somebody. So that's happening. Also, the week before, we're going to be doing a prayer room experience here up on campus. It's going to be open 24 hours a day for seven days. That's a place where you can come by yourself, you can come with a community or a family and there's all kinds of cool expressions that you can do through that prayer process, whether it be journaling, there's going to be places to like, draw, there'll be some prompts, so that way you can kind of be guided through that experience. We have the ability for you to sign up for a certain hours and again, it's just going to be open 24 hours a day. People will be here on campus doing that as well, and then get this that following week after Easter, we are wrapping up this journey through the gospel according to Matthew, which is mind-blowing for those of you who have aged in that process just all of these years. So I want you to put on a calendar, I want to invite you to actually, you know, come through the rest of this stuff. We are coming down to only weeks left in this.

Speaker 1: 2:11

It's been a beautiful journey and we're going to celebrate it in a couple like exciting, special ways. But one of those ways we're going to celebrate it on April 27th, which is that last day we're going to do a picnic with a view we're calling it or a community picnic. We have this great campus up here. You have the ability to go ahead and reserve a parking spot. We've set that up for you so you can invite friends or family and just make food barbecue. Bring something that I can beg from you to eat or I don't know. I'm walking around checking it all out. Whatever it is, once you build it's like from one to four we're going to have like bounce houses If that's your thing, you can bounce or an obstacle course. I'm not going to race you, but it's going to be fun. We just want to be in community together and celebrate that stuff.

Speaker 1: 2:54

All of those things from giving to signing up for the prayer, to signing up for a spot or baptisms. If you want to sign up to be baptized would love that opportunity. I'm going to be in some trunks. I'm going to be in the baptismal pool, if that's something you want to do. There's like a little tap here thing in front of you. You can just tap your phone to it and it'll take you to those places where you can sign up. In fact, one of you. If you tap there, you will see that you get a free coffee today or a drink of your choice from the Bayview Cafe. It's like a Easter egg before Easter, if you know what I'm saying. So we're gonna hop in to today.

Speaker 1: 3:30

We're gonna talk a lot about Jesus, which is good, right, but this moment is also and you just heard this scripture is also hugely about us and like how we identify with it and how we go through pain and suffering in our life, how we face that. You know that, where is God? Like why won't he answer me, why won't he speak to me? Have you ever felt like that in your life? Or maybe even you find yourself here today with some of those feelings? But also there is, most importantly, atonement that's taking place here, and so there's two things to chew on in this passage that I feel like we can gain insight from that I want to highlight specifically. One is what do you do about a moment where you're fearful that something tragic has happened and what can you do about it? Two, then what are you going to do about the sin that so easily entangles your life and the fact that it offends a holy God and there is an eternal expression of it or consequence of a decision that we participate in making? So what are you going to do about those things. And see, I think this is really the tension of all of life, like that. What are we going to do with that? What are we going to do with those types of things?

Speaker 1: 4:46

Verse 45 says from noon until three in the afternoon, darkness came over all of the land, and about three in the afternoon, jesus cried out in a large excuse me, in a loud voice my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? This quote is actually from a scripture in the Old Testament, from Psalm 22. Of all the things that could have been said that Jesus could have said here, he quotes this Psalm. Charles Spurgeon says about Psalm 22,. We should read this reverently, putting off our shoes from our feet, as Moses did at the burning bush. If there be holy ground anywhere in the scriptures, it is in this song.

Speaker 1: 5:29

And so we begin to ask these questions that I propose to you, both doctrinally and practically. So first, doctrinally, some of you may not know that there is some deep theological thing that's happening in this moment at the cross that sometimes we don't talk about, and it's this that Jesus Christ himself was abandoned by God, where he says my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Well, it's because you're greedy, it's because you and I were narcissistic. We're sinful, we're lustful, we're materialistic. The list goes on and there's nothing that you and I could do about it. And so Jesus had to go through this moment. These are the last words of Jesus.

Speaker 1: 6:15

And here's what's fascinating. If you go read the narrative in the gospel and you go all throughout the four different gospels that talk about these crucifixion scenes, jesus is always talking to other people. So there's this woman that comes up and she's crying while he's on the cross and he goes hey, hey, don't weep for me. Then he looks out and he says to the people he says, father, forgive them, don't weep for me. Then he looks out and he says to the people he says, father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do. He looks at the guy beside him and he says today you will join me in paradise. He looks down at his disciple, the one he loved the most, john, and his mother, mary, who was also there observing the crucifixion. He says this is now your son and son, this is now your mother.

Speaker 1: 7:02

He's constantly talking about other people. He's constantly caring for the billions of people who will trust in him throughout history that he's dying on this cross, for I'm suffering the pain and the agony so I can forgive sin. I'm doing all of that for them. And he's constantly thinking about other people. I mean, if you think about it, what an amazing person that would ever decide to do something like this.

Speaker 1: 7:29

And then all of this is true until this moment when, for the first time, he talks about himself and he says my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And it goes dark from noon until three. Why? Because in this moment, god is actually forsaking the son. This moment, I mean, forget about the physical pain that he is enduring and has endured up to this point. You know what the emotional, the psychological, the spiritual pain would have been like for Jesus to have gone through. In that moment You're forsaken, like distance has been put there. Counselors and psychologists tell us that the deepest pain that anyone can go through is the loss of a loved one that you loved, and it was lost and it's gone. And all of a sudden, in this moment, there's this separation where Jesus loses the father. Like that's what's going on here and frankly, it's a doctrine a lot of people don't really like. They call it divine child abuse, the fact that God would somehow reject the son, but I think it holds up biblically.

Speaker 1: 8:44

I'll throw a couple of passages at you. In 2 Corinthians, paul says God made him, who had no sin, to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. And Isaiah says so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. And Isaiah says Surely, he took up our pain and he bore our suffering. Yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our inequities. The punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. In Galatians, christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming the curse for us. For it is written cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.

Speaker 1: 9:33

There's this detachment that takes place, where God in some sense is literally throwing your sin, your guilt, your materialism, your gossip, your pride, your arrogance, the secret stuff that nobody knows about. And where is it going? Well, it has to go on the person of Jesus, and then God can't look upon it. That's the theological image that's taking place here, that the Father is actually looking away. The wrath of God is now falling on the one whom he loves more than all others, and this is the pain that's literally taking place at the center of the Trinity, which is a mystery, of course, but we have to understand that this is the solution to our problem, because we could not bridge this gap ourselves. And so Jesus Christ is the one who gets deserted. He actually gets deserted by God.

Speaker 1: 10:33

Why, so that you and I, in our life, we only feel like we get deserted once in a while? And you know this life is life's hard. Sometimes this stinks Like my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Like, why are you so far from saving me from my words, of my grooming? Like I'm struggling here. Like, like life is not easy, right? Like you feel this. I know you feel this. You feel your marriage struggling or beginning to dissolve. You feel the tension of trying to raise kids, or the sickness or the diagnosis of yourself or a loved one, and life just beats up on us. You feel this and, frankly, friends, this is actually what I love about Christianity that it doesn't pretend that life is perfect. It's not trying to paint this like picture of rainbows and butterflies, right, and if you've ever been pitched this version where you believe in Christ and when that happens, like your best life just shows up and all pain is gone, there's no more tears.

Speaker 1: 11:33

Here's the problem. You know this Life is sick and it is messed up and then you're sitting there, going. But this is a savior, like the righteous one, and in the midst of these trying times that we experience, when you begin to doubt whether God is there, heaven feels like brass and you don't know where to go or what to say. What do you think? Right, my God? My God, why have you forsaken me? Like what's the deal? Why haven't you shown up? You haven't spoken, you're not moving. Why aren't you intervening? Like what am I going to do? How do I have perspective in the midst of this? Like what do I draw on?

Speaker 1: 12:11

And here's what religion will tell you, the religion of the world. Try to find something that's going to give you a bunch of good ideas and teachings. You know so believe these kind of like esoteric teachings and you'll get to this higher state of enlightenment and just believe these laws and basically compare this religion's great ideas to this religion's great ideas and then the way that you're going to get through life and suffering and pain and tragedy, like Christianity now comes along and goes like don't do that, like I got something better for you and it's this. The only way that you're going to know that God is for you, that he's with you in the midst of suffering and agony, is actually to draw on the past and then what is in history, what has already been done, and draw that out now to who you are, and then that promise of a future to take it with you. I mean, listen, it's described in Psalm 22.

Speaker 1: 13:17

Listen to Psalm 22. It says my God, this is the David, king David, writing this. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? You feel so distant. Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish? My God? I cry out by day but you do not answer. By night I do not find rest yet. Maybe we just need to pause in that moment, right there, like life's gonna life. Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One. You are the one Israel praises In you. Our ancestors in the past put their trust. They trusted and you delivered them To you. They cried and were saved. In you, they trusted and were not put to shame.

Speaker 1: 14:07

You see, I'm going to base my future on what God has done in the past, because that's the best indicator, right? What's the best indicator of future performance? Well, it's usually past performance. That's it Like how do you know God is going to get me out of my pain and suffering and agony? Like by good ideas and good religion? No, it's because history tells us what he's done, like it's already been done. This is what's been done in the past. He did it in the work of Jesus. He did it in the story of Israel, Like he freed them from their slavery. He did it in the story of Israel, like he freed them from their slavery. He did it and he's going to do it again. We see this over and over, and here is this great hymn that speaks to this, by John Newton. Here's what he says His love in time. Past forbids me to think. He'll leave me at last in trouble, to sink by prayer. Let me wrestle, then he will perform with Christ in the vessel. I smile at the storm. It's only because of what he did in the past, only because of what he's done through Jesus, where we get to see Jesus as this unbelievable example of suffering and pain.

Speaker 1: 15:21

And if you're exploring Christianity right now. I want you to know that this is the God that we follow. It's not a distant God who's going to like throw down some laws and rules for you to just figure out. He's the one, friends, who actually entered in and suffered himself from the very beginning. He was born into poverty, he had to run from people who were trying to murder him. He fought temptation by Satan, he fought pain of the crowds and rejection, and the Jews were killing him and the Romans were literally killing everyone. And he's saying don't go for and I'll say this to you, don't go for a God who's far off, distant and moralistic, and just hope that maybe you could be good enough, be smart enough, that then someone will love you. That's just not reality. That's in Jesus and what he did for you. At the end of the day, that's all that matters. That he suffered for you and that this is the right God to choose out of the day. That's all that matters, that he suffered for you and that this is the right God to choose out of the marketplace of ideas. And I'll tell you why.

Speaker 1: 16:30

There's a pastor, his name's Tim Keller. He actually passed away not that long ago and he pastored a church in New York City and the Sunday after 9-11 occurred, his church is packed. In fact, many churches were packed following that because there had just been these planes and thousands of people had been killed, and all of these people, specifically in Manhattan, stormed to the churches because they wanted answers, they were looking for something, and what Pastor Tim Keller preached on was Lazarus's tomb and how Jesus walked up to this tomb, and the wording and the phrasing in the Greek talks about how he came up to it and he like snorted at it like a bull, like how much he hates death, and then it says the shortest verse in the Bible then, that Jesus wept. It's the shortest verse in Scripture. He points out the fact that Jesus wept and it's fascinating, really, because like 10 minutes after this, he's going to raise Lazarus from the dead. And so you're like what are you weeping for? Like you know what you're about to do, and Tim Keller says that he wept because he wanted to enter into the pain.

Speaker 1: 17:45

And that's the God that Christianity offers you. It's not a God of ideas, a God that makes you storm up the mountain and hope that you can perform and be good enough and show off. No friends, it's the God, who came down the mountain and he enters in and walks alongside of you in your pain. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And how do you think that he can identify with you right now in your pain and your agony? Because he went through it, he's going through it and he wasn't just an example of it. It actually accomplished a thing that will allow you to both get through it, empower you and go to a destination where you will never see it or experience it again Heaven on earth. I hear about people's pain and agony on a regular basis, or I get emails about it, and I'm trying to encourage you and tell you that Jesus Christ is the one that gets you through it, because Jesus Christ is the one who went through it. No other religion gives you that. No other religion gives you that. No other religion gives you that.

Speaker 1: 19:03

There was a guy years ago. His name's David Watson. He was a Christian leader and he was dying of cancer and reflecting on this reality about Jesus in the midst of the other options, he said someone once said to me that there cannot be a God of love because if there was, he would look upon the world and his heart would break. And Watson said but the gospel then points to the cross and says yes, god's heart did break. Someone said to me but it is God who made the world. It is he who should bear the load. And the gospel points to the cross and says he did bear the load. God weeps with those who weep. He feels our pain. He enters into our sorrows with his compassionate love.

Speaker 1: 19:54

I may just encourage you don't run from God in the midst of these moments. Run from suffering. Yes, I get it, friends, but we don't run from God in the midst of suffering. It's very important that we understand that. So why can Jesus say this from the cross and still be on mission? It's because he knows what he was sent to earth to do. It's because he knows what he was sent to earth to do. The book of Hebrews says for the joy set before him he endured the cross. That's reality. John, one of the disciples whom he loved the most, who was there as an eyewitness in this moment, dozens of years later, writes this my dear children, I write to you so that you will not sin, but if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father. Jesus Christ, the righteous one. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours, but for the sins of the whole world. Now, friends, here's the crowning statement in this paragraph the death of Jesus, by which we were forgiven, is the atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Speaker 1: 21:13

So some of you may ask well, what does atone mean? Or atonement? Well, really, the best definition I can give you, even from the dictionary, is atonement is to make at-one-ment, break the word up at-one-ment, to make right, to reconcile. What the English word means is that you have, you know, two people, two parties, and they're at odds with one another. There's been some sort of wrong, one person has vandalized another's property or life in some way, there's been wrongdoing and now there's a mess and there's this conflict. There's this tension in the relationship, and what our English word atonement refers to is the means or the way in which that damage or harm is actually dealt with so that the two can be made at one minute. It's about relational repair, reconciliation between two people who are now suffering from something that one person actually did to another.

Speaker 1: 22:14

The biblical concept of atonement is actually to cover for someone else's failure. Cover for someone else's failure and the concept of covering someone, or erasing or taking responsibility for consequences of wrongdoing, like covering a debt, like I got you covered. Let me explain. It actually does more than this. So just a quick illustration.

Speaker 1: 22:38

Let's say this week you and I we're going to go to Sandoval's for lunch downtown Great chips and salsa, by the way, best in town. So we're going to Sandoval's and we're hanging out, we're having a great meal, we get done and the server walks over to us and is getting ready to give us our check and all of a sudden I realize, oh my gosh, I forgot my debit card. I don't have any money. And you do a little freak out and you're like I don't have any. I'm oh my gosh, I can't believe I did this. I don't. I'm sorry, I don't have anything on me. So have I failed? Did I know I was going to go out and eat some delicious chips and salsa and enjoy this meal? Yes, it is the worst failure of my day. No, but have I failed? Yes, what I've done is I failed to remember to bring money or to be prepared to pay for this food.

Speaker 1: 23:23

So now you could be this really nice person. You could not say what you're really thinking is like you did this on purpose, right? Or like what an idiot Like you knew we were going to eat. Like what are you playing? Like some little game, right? Or you could just actually be really gracious and be like I've done this, I've totally done this too, like it's all good, no worries, and you could forgive me. You know, you could say it's totally fine, I forgive you, it's okay. But then the server's going to come with a check, right? And you can tell the server oh, my friend Lawrence over here, he totally messed it up, he forgot his wallet, but I told him no big deal, I forgive you, I forgive you for doing that. And then the server is going to say to you like, oh, you must be a really nice person, but here's the check. Who's going to pay? Right?

Speaker 1: 24:11

So even forgiveness itself is an act that requires absorbing a cost. You can say you forgive me, but what that failure has produced in this world is this debt that is now outstanding and it can't be overlooked. It has to be dealt with in some way. And so if you're actually going to forgive me, you actually have to cover me, like you have to absorb the cost of what this failure has produced. And the server, frankly, doesn't care if you like me or don't like me after I forgot my wallet. What the server cares about is who's going to pay for this meal. Because it's not me, that's atonement. It's covering for someone.

Speaker 1: 24:55

Now atonement does more than that because, let's say, we go out to lunch every week for a month to Sandoval's. It's our new spot, it's our jam, right? And then I start to do this every time we go to lunch. You're going to start to resent me, right? Like it's as if I'm making toxic the air and the atmosphere of our relationship, that my perpetual failure starts to make you think that I don't care about you, that I don't respect you, that I'm just going to mooch everything I can off of you, like, oh, I did it again, you forgive me, right? So atonement both has to cover the hard cost of my failure, but then it also needs some resolution of this relational tension and damage that I'm now doing to you because of how I'm treating you Jesus' life and death. It deals with the hard cost, it covers the debt, but it does more. It actually restores the damaged relationship. That's what's going on here in this concept of atonement.

Speaker 1: 26:11

And so what are these? You know rituals. Was there originals that were in place or symbols. Well, they had something that they could do and we see this in the Old Testament that they actually had something where they can continue to write the relationship, and a cost could be covered in their relationship with God, and that was through killing animals. So if you read in the book of Leviticus which will put you to bed the first seven chapters are taken up with just these rituals of sacrifice that the Israelites there was, these priests were to perform these, and there was five different kinds that they could do. Two of them just happened on a regular basis, were just to say thank you and giving back, as a symbolic token, just a little bit of what God has given to me as a way to say thank you. And there was two lambs that were sacrificed every single day. They were done daily, one in the morning around 9 am, the third hour, and the other in the afternoon around 3 pm, the ninth hour.

Speaker 1: 27:07

Three then other types of offerings that you read about in Leviticus are ways of saying like I'm sorry, and there was different rituals that attach to this, like the net effect then is that you take an animal, you had cheated your neighbor, you hurt someone you'd stolen, et cetera. You don't love your neighbor as yourself and you realize what you've done and you're like, okay, I can make it right with that person, I can repay them for the things that I've done. Or I can say I forgive them, or will you forgive me, but the server still is going to come and say, now, who's gonna pay? The server still is going to come and say now, who's going to pay? And the God of Israel comes and is like Lawrence, you're my people, like you're supposed to live as priests to the nations, a light to the nations. And this is how you're going to behave, like you haven't just offended your neighbor, you've offended God.

Speaker 1: 28:04

And so what you do then is you take this animal and you go in and you consult with the priest and you know this is what I've done and here's my offering. And then they go through this whole set of rituals and that animal, ultimately, is going to die and its throat is going to be slit in front of you and it's going to be drained. This blood is going to be drained into a bowl, and then they're going to cut up the animal and then some of it's going to be burnt on the altar and part of that that's taking place here. And here's what's so interesting is there's different places that the blood of an animal would get sprinkled or like flicked out, depending on what type of offense and who committed the offense. Like it would get closer and closer to the presence of God, the larger the offense. And I mean, can you just imagine with me for a second, like what a mess. I guess it's gross this blood that's being like kind of thrown all over the temple and this altar area and you're sitting there and you come to this realization that we're vandalizing his space by our actions. So why blood? Like? Why is this so gruesome? Like?

Speaker 1: 29:13

What's the symbolism? What does it mean and what is? How does this atoning sacrifice work? How does it actually cover evil? Well, the key line is from the book of Leviticus that unpacks this symbolism is in chapter 17. It says for the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar. It is the blood that makes atonement for one's life, it's the blood that symbolizes life, that covers your life, it's the life that's covering for another life. And as they go and they offer that animal.

Speaker 1: 29:56

There's two main things if you study Leviticus, that emerges out of it that the sacrament, the symbolism, tells us something about our sin and the symbolism tells us something about God that when we vandalize my neighbor, when we strip them of their dignity as a human who reflects the image of God and I don't love them as myself I am introducing death into the world. It's a visual symbol. It says that my moral actions actually have real consequences and the stakes are very high the brokenness and the distortion of my human heart that humans create death in God's good good world. And this animal dies to tell me that the stakes are really high and that my moral choices actually matter and that my sin fractures relationships. It's the death of healthy relationships. It ruins God's good good world in its very high stakes. That's why this symbolism of life in the blood takes place.

Speaker 1: 31:08

Life covers a life, but the fact that it's covering my life also tells me not just something about my sin and the consequences of that. It tells me actually something about God that if God, in his disappointment with us, wanted to walk out on Israel, he could have Like. It is not his nature. That's what it's actually telling us about God that we're not getting something that we deserve. And so, for the Israelites, every time you would go and you would offer this animal, you would be reminded not that God is angry with you, no, it's the exact opposite, it's.

Speaker 1: 31:43

He's given me this elaborate symbolism here to sink into the psyche of the people of Israel and everyone who had participated in this, to remind me that he loves me, he doesn't want to kill me, because God could do just that if he wanted to, that God loves us and he's not going to give up on us, and that our moral choices have real consequences and the stakes are high because of our failure actually creates death in God's good world. And so, then, he's given us this life to cover my failure and my sin. Friends, jesus covered for you, he covered for you, and odds are in your moments of deepest failure. It's very hard for you to believe that, but that's why. That's why we eat the symbols of this story with communion earlier, that we pause, we reflect and we remember that life covered a life, that atonement take place. We don't do those rituals anymore because of Jesus on the cross, but he left us with these two new rituals, one which we already did today, which was communion as a stop and a reflection of a life covering a life. The other ritual he left with us and many of you, actually tons of you, are participating in two weeks, is baptism, this new ritual as a reminder that death happens and we are buried then in the water to be raised to do life.

Speaker 1: 33:35

So my question, challenge, encouragement what needs to die today on the cross with Jesus? Do you remember what I told you about the sacrifice of lambs? That there was two that happened every day. This was every day, daily One in the morning around 9 am, the third hour, and the other in the afternoon around 3 pm, the ninth hour. Have you connected it? Jesus was crucified on the cross, the gospel tells us, at the third hour, lamb of God. Jesus said, as we read today in the scriptures, it is finished, and gave up his spirit at the ninth hour. Lamb of God, friends, you have been atoned, we have been atoned, and so what needs to die in us for our new life to begin? Take up your cross, leave it all there and say goodbye to fear, goodbye to guilt, goodbye shame, goodbye pain and goodbye grief. Would you stand with me and respond in worship?