God visits Calvary
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2019 · 14 April 2019
Let us begin with Mark 15:31, “Likewise the chief priests also, mocking among themselves with the scribes, said, “He saved others; Himself He cannot save. 32 Let the Christ, the King of Israel, descend now from the cross, that we may see and believe.” Even those who were crucified with Him reviled Him.” 33 Now when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.”
“34 And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” which is translated, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”35 Some of those who stood by, when they heard that, said, “Look, He is calling for Elijah!” 36 Then someone ran and filled a sponge full of sour wine, and offered it to Him to drink, saying, “Let Him alone; let us see if Elijah will come to take Him down.”
“37 And Jesus cried out with a loud voice, and breathed His last. 38 Then the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. 39 So when the centurion, who stood opposite Him, saw that He cried out like this and breathed His last, he said, “Truly this Man was the Son of God!” 40 There were also women looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the Less and of Joses, and Salome.”
“41 who also followed Him and ministered to Him when He was in Galilee, and many other women who came up with Him to Jerusalem.” Everything about this is intended to show Jesus scorn and disdain and ridicule and mock the notion that He is any kind of king at all. But God doesn’t come down to destroy the blasphemers, and He doesn’t come down to protect His Son.
Was God not there? God was there and He was there not to protect His Son, but to punish His Son. Let’s look at the passage. Three features come out of this account. First, we look at the Savior and His sacrifice. Then we look at the centurion and the confession of his faith. And then we look at the women and the confusion in their minds. First of all, the Savior and His death in verses 33 through 38.
Here’s the high point of salvation history. This is the long-awaited Lamb of God dying for the sins of the world. Words are inadequate to capture the supernatural reality of what is happening on the cross. Verse 33, “When the sixth hour came, darkness fell over the whole land until the ninth hour.” The sixth hour for the Jews is noon for us. The Jewish day begins at 6:00 AM, at sunrise.
The Lord by this time had already spoken three times. He said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” to the thief on the cross that forgiveness was available if he asked for it, which he did. Then He said to John, “Behold your mother,” to care for Mary. And Jesus said to His mother, “Behold your son,” meaning John. The third thing He said to the thief, “Today you will be with me in paradise.”
With the sun at noon is precisely the moment that darkness fell over the whole land until the ninth hour. What is this? Some said that this is a natural eclipse. No way. Others have suggested that this is satanic darkness. But the truth is that this is God coming on the scene. If you read the Old Testament, you would know that God is often spoken in many places as light: Psalm 27:1, Psalm 18, Psalm 26, Isaiah 2, Isaiah 60.
Light in the sense of truth, wisdom, holiness and righteousness. His presence is the Shekinah light. However, there were times when God shows Himself as darkness. And it goes back to Genesis 15:12-15, and Exodus 10:21-22, and Exodus 19:16-18 at Mount Sinai, and Isaiah 5, and Isaiah 8 when God appears in darkness. The presence of God could be manifest light or manifest darkness.
Darkness symbolizes divine fury. Darkness symbolizes righteous wrath. Darkness then, is the form of God’s presence in judgment. That is why hell is a place that Jesus said in Matthew three times, is outer darkness, where there’s weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. And it is the darkness of God’s presence. He is the one who is present there in judgment from noon to three o’clock.
During that time hell came to Jerusalem. For three hours, hell came to Golgotha as God unleashed the full extent of everlasting punishment on His Son. Wrath, in Isaiah 13:9, mean fierce anger. As God is the real power behind hell’s punishing experience, God is the true power behind the darkness of Calvary for here He unleashes judgment for believers on His Son.
This was the cup of wrath that Jesus anticipated in the Garden. This is why it was such a revolting anticipation that made Him sweat drops of blood because in those three hours, Jesus suffered the eternal hell of all the people through human history who would be saved. He bore all their eternal punishments together and did it in three hours. Jesus could receive an infinite amount of wrath because He is infinite and eternal.
This darkness then is not the absence of God or the presence of Satan. This darkness is God in full judgment vengeance, God in full judgment fury. It is infinite wrath moved by infinite justice, releasing infinite punishment on the infinite Son, who can absorb all the tortures of eternities of hell and do it in three hours. It is in those three hours that Christ took the curse.
And at the ninth hour, it ended. Three in the afternoon our time. And Mark records the fourth statement of our Lord, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” which is translated, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” This is the first thing He said after the darkness ended. What does that mean? Our Lord is expressing that the judgment has ended, and He wants the comfort. He experienced the separation from God.
And His words were prophesied in Psalm 22:1, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” God was there in the punishment, but now Christ is saying, “Where are you in comforting?” This is a reminder that hell is the full fury of God’s personal punishment and He will never be there to comfort. Hell is punishment without relief. So even this is for Jesus to suffer.
When Jesus said, “My God, my God,” this is the only time in the New Testament that He ever referred to God in any other way than “Father.” But now He is feeling His absence. This double expression is a way to identify the person you’re addressing with affection. For example, the angel says, “Abraham, Abraham,” in Genesis 22. In Exodus 3, God says, “Moses, Moses.” David in 2 Samuel 18 - 19 says, “Absalom, Absalom.”
His cry raised no question with the people in verse 35. When some of the bystanders heard it, they said, “Behold, He’s calling for Elijah.” Here again a repeat of sarcasm. They heard what He said in Aramaic, “Eloi, Eloi” is “My God, my God.” But in mockery they said, “Oh, He’s calling for Elijah.” Why would they say that? Because Malachi 4:5-6 says that when the Messiah came, Elijah also would be there.
Most likely that total darkness for three hours would shut down the mocking. But this blasphemy continues. Verse 36, “Then someone ran and filled a sponge full of sour wine, put it on a reed, and offered it to Him to drink, saying, “Let Him alone; let us see if Elijah will come to take Him down.” That’s just more of the same abuse, more of the same scorn and blasphemy.
They have seen His miracles, they have seen His casting out of demons. They have seen His raising of the dead. They all know Lazarus was raised from the dead because that’s a family well-known by the people in the city. They have heard Jesus’ teaching. It had no effect on them. They have seen His compassion and His kindness. And now they have seen how He dies. It does not move them.
Verse 37, “And Jesus cried out with a loud voice, and breathed His last.” Why a loud cry? Because He said in John 10:18, “No one takes it from Me. because I lay down My life that I may take it again.” He didn’t die because He couldn’t breathe. He didn’t die because He was out of strength. In John 19:30, “When Jesus had received the sour wine, He cried out on a loud voice, ‘It is finished.’”
In Luke 23:46 Jesus says, “Into your hands, I commit my Spirit.” He said three things before the darkness, nothing during the darkness, and four statements after the darkness, “And breathed His last.” In Mark there are two immediate events. Verse 38, “Then the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.” This was the most important curtain that separated the Holy of Holies from the Holy Place.
This symbolized the sinners’ separation from God. But the New Covenant of salvation at the moment Jesus died was ratified. He had paid in full the punishment, justly for all who would ever believe. And at 3:00 in the afternoon on that Friday in April in the year A.D. 30, the Old Covenant was abolished. All sacrifices became pointless because the only saving sacrifice had been offered.
And when the curtain was split from top to bottom, it couldn’t have been done by man, it had to be done by God. It was God’s exclamation point on the death of His Son. And what it said was the way into the presence of God is now wide open for anyone. What does the death of the Lord Jesus accomplish? It obliterates the symbols and the ceremonies and brings salvation to everyone who chooses to enter.
The way to God has been opened by the death of Christ. It’s the end of the priesthood and the sacrificial system. It’s the end of the temple and the Holy of Holies. At that moment, the priests began to slaughter tens of thousands of Passover lambs so that people could eat the Passover meal that evening. At that same time the Passover Lamb Himself had been slain by God. So all other sacrifices were pointless.
Mark doesn’t tell us, but Matthew does, that there was another miracle that happened at the time the veil was torn. Matthew 27:51 says, “The earth quaked and the rocks were split.” And earthquakes in Scripture are very often like the darkness. The Day of the Lord is associated with not only the darkness but also with great earthquakes. Nahum 1:5, “The mountains quake before Him. The earth heaves at His presence.”
Another miracle happened according to Matthew 27:52 - 53, “The graves were opened and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the graves after His resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many.” The veil is torn. Earthquakes take place. Graves are opened. Dead people come back to life and proclaim the truth after the resurrection of our Lord.
This is a pre-figuring of the resurrection. So God did show up at Calvary. Next we read the centurion’s confession. Verse 39, “So when the centurion, who stood opposite Him, saw that He cried out like this and breathed His last, he said, “Truly this Man was the Son of God!” This centurion was involved in the execution. He’s a career battle-hardened soldier familiar with death.
He has been guarding Jesus from the beginning. He is an eyewitness of everything, most likely from the arrest of Jesus in the early hours of Friday in the Garden all the way to this final moment. He saw it all, the mock trials, the abuse, the spitting, the punching, the slapping, the sneering, the mocking, and the ridicule. He saw Jesus take it all and he saw no retaliation.
He heard what Jesus said, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” Perhaps he heard because he was near the cross, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” He heard everything. He heard Pilate repeatedly declare that Jesus was innocent. And he concluded, “This is no ordinary man.” And he now comes to the right conclusion that He is the Son of God.
I don’t know how he got all of this information, but Paul, on the road to Damascus, was, by the sovereign and divine intervention of God, regenerated and converted instantly. And the thief on the cross was given life by a sovereign spirit in the midst of his ridicule. And here is this Gentile soldier, the first convert to Christ after His crucifixion. And he’s not alone, other soldiers with him had the same response.
Some wonderful things happened at Calvary. A Jewish blasphemer was saved, the thief. A few Gentiles, the blaspheming soldiers were forgiven and saved, and the message is that the grace of God in forgiveness and salvation is extended to the worst blasphemers. On the other hand, Luke 23:48 says, “The crowds, when they observed what had happened, began to return beating their breasts.”
It doesn’t say anything about them believing, but some of them did. In Acts 2, some of them must have been there on the Day of Pentecost, where three thousand repented, believed. And were saved and within a few weeks, thousands and thousands more. At the very moment of the death of Christ, the purpose of His death to save penitent sinners is realized, the Jew first and then the Gentile.
Third point is verses 40 and 41, “There were also women looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the Less and of Joses, and Salome, 41 who also followed Him and ministered to Him when He was in Galilee, and many other women who came up with Him to Jerusalem.” Mary Magdalene was the first eyewitness of Jesus after His resurrection. Mary was the mother of James and Joses.
There’s another lady named Salome. She is the mother of James and John, the wife of Zebedee. They were eyewitnesses of His entire ministry in Galilee and subsequently in Judea for the last year of His life. And they are the eyewitnesses of His resurrection. And in Mark, only two groups have ministered to Christ. These women and the holy angels. So they functioned as a kind of earthly angels. Let us pray.