THE TRIUMPH OF GOD BY THE OBEDIENT

DEATH OF JESUS

Matthew 27:32-56

INTRODUCTION

How do you know that God is present and at work? What are the unmistakable signs that the supernatural power of God is at work? I don’t have any surveys to prove it, but it seems to me that for most of us, the main, irrefutable evidence of supernatural power is miracles. The expectation of most people is that if God were to show up, miracles would follow. This isn’t just a Christian expectation but the expectation of all humans. The way that the invisible, spiritual world is made indisputably obvious is through the manipulation of the physical world. Divine power is manifested through unexpected and unexplainable observable events like healing paralytics, stilling storms, making trees wither with a word, raising dead people to life.

Matthew, in his biography of Jesus, records these and other miracles performed by Jesus Christ. However, it is the death of Jesus that he presents as the clearest evidence of the work of God through Jesus. Contrary to human expectation, the suffering of Jesus Christ on a Roman cross was the most powerful work he performed. While Jesus performed hundreds of miracles, he also repeatedly said that miracles are not the primary proof that he is God’s son. Matthew, along with the rest of the NT, insists that the most powerful thing that Jesus Christ did was to die upon the cross. He agrees fully with the apostle Paul who says this about the death of Jesus upon the cross, “…we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” This claim is what sets Christianity apart from all human religions. In this account of the death of Jesus, Matthew is not merely telling us a story but he is seeking through the story to point us to the significance of this gruesome death. In this passage Matthew gives us at least three reasons as to why the death of Christ is the greatest display of God’s power in the universe.

MAIN POINT

The power and glory of Christ is most clearly revealed in the weakness and shame of the cross because…

I. The power of Christ over evil is displayed (vv. 32-44)

To claim that the death of Jesus is evidence of Christ’s power over evil is a shocking thing to say. The scene described in this text, at first glance, appears to show the triumph of evil. How can I claim that this man, covered with his own blood, nailed to these wooden beams, gasping for air, surrounded by his mocking enemies and dying with an anguished scream after six hours of horror is conquering evil? How can I or as the rest of the NT does, claim that this suffering is the chief evidence of Christ’s power over evil? There are many ways that the NT describes the cross as Christ’s victory over evil. However, I want to concentrate on three ways that Matthew points out the power of Christ over evil in this passage.

First, almost every line in this passage is either a direct quote of or an allusion to dozens of OT passages. What these evil human beings do and say in this passage is exactly what God wanted them to do and say as evidenced by the dozens of prophetic words that they fulfill. There are far too many OT passages referred to in this story than I can possibly talk about in the time we have so I want to concentrate on Psalm 22, which was read for us earlier. Flip back to Psalm 22. Verse 6 is fulfilled in that all the people who witness his death mock him; soldiers, those who pass by, the leaders and even the robbers. Verse 7 is almost exactly quoted in v. 39. The words of v. 8 are virtually quoted by the religious leaders in v. 43. Verses 12, 13 and 16 are excellent metaphors of Jesus’ position. His enemies surround him while they tear at his flesh with their tongues after they have torn at his flesh with their whip. Verses 14, 16b and 17a are all fulfilled in v. 35, “when they had crucified him…” Verse 18 is fulfilled in v. 35. Finally, Jesus fulfills verse 1 in the cry of dereliction in v. 46. This is but a small sample of the large number of OT passages that Matthew is explicitly drawing our attention to. The point he is making is that all of this evil is no accident. God did not hold a gun to anyone’s head and force them to do these things. Every person is acting according to the desires of their own hearts. God does not do the evil but all the evil that is done is according to his will. Jesus is not a helpless victim. He submits to the predetermined plan of God and so demonstrates he is in control of the evil, not under the control of it.

Second, I want you to see all the ways that the very words that the people used to mock Jesus testify to who Jesus is. In v. 37 we are told that Pilate had a sign put over his head that said, “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews.” That is exactly right, Jesus is the long awaited King of the Jews. Pilate put the sign over Jesus as was required in all executions, to identify the crime for which Jesus was being crucified. However, he wrote it, not as an accusation but as an affirmation, probably to irritate the Jewish religious leaders. Yet, in writing it like this, he, without intending, confirms the truth about Jesus. Unwittingly, he bears witness to the glory of Christ.

The people passing by mock Jesus by quoting the false charge that was leveled at him during his “trial” before the Jewish ruling council. “You who tears down the temple and rebuilds it in three days, save yourself.” They are actually quoting in part something that Jesus actually said as recorded in John 2: 19, in response to the demand of the Jewish leaders that he show them a miracle. He said, “Destroy this temple and I will raise it again in three days.” Then in v. 22 we are told, “After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said.” In other words, the words of mocking bear witness to the resurrection, which they do not intend. While he isn’t going to come down from the cross now, because he is the Son of God he is going to rise from the death inflicted by the cross.

The mocking words of the Jewish religious leaders are full of affirmations of the true identity of Christ. They acknowledge he is the Savior. They call him the King of Israel and the Son of God. They confess that he trusts in God. Again, they mean all this as scornful derision however, Matthew, by recording their comments is directing our attention to the irony in these words. All those who mock Jesus confess things about him that are true, even though they don’t intend to do so. Christ rules over the tongues of his enemies.

Finally, if you are familiar with Matthew’s gospel you ought to hear another voice mingled with the mocking human voices. There was another time in Jesus’ life when someone challenged him to do something to relieve his suffering and added these words of contempt, “If you are the Son of God.” Satan, three years before this while tempting Jesus at the end of his 40 day fast in the wilderness dared Jesus to turn stones to bread and to throw himself off of the temple, “if you are the Son of God.” In each case, Satan challenges Jesus to prove he is God’s Son by using his power to escape suffering. Here Satan speaks through the human chorus, tempting Jesus to use his power to escape suffering and prove who he is. Here Christ endures the great temptation of Satan. “God has abandoned you. God does not love you. You are a nothing and a nobody. Nobody cares for you. Prove that you are God’s Son and that he has not abandoned you. Come down from the cross.” Jesus refuses to take the short cut to glory. Jesus lives by faith in the loving purpose of his Father and does not give into the temptation to live independent of his Father, which is the heart of evil. He conquers evil by staying on the cross. He perseveres in faith, even while suffering and being told by man and Satan that God has left him. Thus, he proves that he is the Son of God by staying on the cross rather than by coming down from the cross.

The power and glory of Christ is most clearly revealed in the weakness and shame of the cross because…

•  The power of Christ over evil is displayed

•  And because…

II. The power of Christ’s love is fully revealed (vv. 45-50)

The physical suffering of Jesus is almost unimaginable. However, Matthew, in his entire narrative barely mentions the physical aspect of Jesus’ suffering. In all of chapters 26 and 27, only about 15 words talk about the physical abuse he endured. When he gets to the actual death of Jesus in vv. 45-50, he gives us more detail but it is not the detail of physical suffering that he gives us. Rather Matthew details for us the abandonment of Jesus by his Father. Verse 45 tells us that at noon darkness came over the entire land of Israel that lasted until three in the afternoon. Darkness, throughout the OT is associated with the outpouring of God’s wrath upon sin. The ninth act of judgment that God sent upon the land of Egypt was darkness that lasted for three days. It was at the end of this darkness that God sent the angel of death throughout the land of Egypt during the night, in the darkness, to kill all the firstborn sons. In every house that did not have the blood of the Passover lamb spread upon the door, God killed the firstborn son. The darkness that comes over the land of Egypt is symbolic of the wrath that God is pouring out upon his Son for the sins of the world. God abandons his Son. For three hours, the innocent Jesus endures hell.

At the end of those three hours Jesus cries out, using the words of the first verse of Psalm 22, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” Matthew records this cry in Aramaic, the language that Jesus spoke and then he translates it into Greek. Why does he do this? He does it, as John Calvin says in his commentary, “…as if he made us hear Christ himself repeating the very words which then proceeded from his mouth.” Matthew wants us to fix our attention upon this cry as the heart and center of the suffering of Christ on our behalf. Jesus endured hell for us. Hell is the experience of being abandoned by God. I want to help us get a handle upon the horror of what Jesus is expressing here. We don’t feel that the absence of God is a very big deal because most of the time most of us are not conscious of God’s presence in any way. We do not live with the conscious knowledge of the loving presence of God and so the loss of his presence does not seem to be terrifying. What we refuse to recognize is that every pleasure we experience is the evidence of the presence of God. No living human has ever experienced the abandonment of God like Jesus did here. Even in our darkest moments of despair, we are only encountering the fringes of the black hole where all light is snuffed out, which is the absence of God. It’s not only that God was absent but that he was only present to Jesus as consuming fire. God in his Father love was absent and God in his wrath was present.

Then, like rubbing salt into the gapping wound of a man who has been slashed open with a machete, the mob of mockers pour on their contempt. They know very well what Jesus said. They all speak Aramaic. They mock his pain, his cry to God by saying that he is superstitiously crying out to Elijah, the famous OT prophet to come save him. They speak as if Jesus has given up on God and is acting like some superstitious, ignorant nominally religious person. Then, one of the Roman soldiers decides to have some sport by filling a sponge with the sour wine that the soldiers drink and offering it to him in a mock act of sympathy. Jesus cries out in the agony of hell and the only comfort he gets is sour wine offered by a laughing soldier . In doing this they fulfill another prophetic word from Psalm 69. There the Messiah says, “…all my enemies are before me…I looked for sympathy, but there was none, for comforters, but I found none. They put gall in my food and gave me vinegar for my thirst.” In the final dagger of scorn they say, “Leave him alone. Let’s see if Elijah comes to save him. “God isn’t going to help him, let’s see if the dead prophet will.” Finally, with a cry of desperate anguish, he screams out and he gives up his spirit.

I said at the beginning of this point that we are seeing here the power of Christ’s love. The depth of a person’s love is measured by the suffering that a person is willing to undergo in order to provide aid or give a gift to the one he loves. There is no greater suffering that can be endured than the suffering that Jesus endured upon the cross. For whom did he willingly suffer this? First, he endured this suffering out of his love for his Father. This has been Matthew’s point beginning back in the Garden of Gethsemane. He is doing this because it is the will of his Father and he loves his Father and does everything his Father asks of him. We see it reflected here in the cry of dereliction. He cries out to “My God.” In the midst of his despair, Jesus yet knows that God is his God. While experiencing the full abandonment of God yet, he trusts God. In fact, when we turn back to Psalm 22, while it does recount the suffering of Jesus, the bulk of it is an expression of the Psalmists love for and trust in God. Jesus endures this suffering out of his love for God. The Father determined before he made the world that he was going to love sinners. The Son, in order to preserve the good name of the Father, willingly volunteered to suffer hell for those sinners whom the Father would forgive so that God could not be accused of being a corrupt judge. The sins of every forgiven sinner have been punished in the death of Christ, so God cannot be accused of violating justice when he welcomes a guilty, hell-deserving sinner into his presence. Jesus endured this suffering out of his love for his Father.

However, the last part of v. 50 points towards his love for sinners. “He gave up his spirit.” No one took his life from him. He laid it down. As he says in John 10, “…I lay down my life for the sheep. No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.” As he says in John 15, “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” You don’t die for your friends for no good reason. Imagine you’re hiking at Devil’s Lake State Park along one of the many cliffs with a group of friends and suddenly you say to your friends, “I’m going to show you how much I love you by jumping off this cliff to my death.” Then you jump out into the air and are shattered on the rocks below. Does that show your love for your friends? Absolutely not. However, if your friend is about to be run over by a car and you push him out of the way and so are struck by the car and killed instead of him, that is the greatest act of love you can show. You have gladly given everything out of your love for your friend. This is what Jesus has done. He gave up his spirit as an offering to God for our sins. He is the sacrificial lamb upon whom the sins of all who trust in him, that is, his friends, have been placed. Everything you see Jesus endure here, especially his being abandoned by the Father is what is due to you. He endured it for everyone who trusts in him, because he loves us. No one has ever loved you like this.

The power and glory of Christ is most clearly revealed in the weakness and shame of the cross because…

•  The power of Christ over evil is displayed

•  The power of Christ’s love is fully revealed

•  And because…

III. The power of Christ for the salvation of everyone who believes is exhibited (vv. 51-56)

Matthew now records for us four events followed by a description of the response of the Roman soldiers who are keeping watch over Jesus. It is three in the afternoon when Jesus rends the air with his blood-curdling scream and gives up his spirit. At that moment, the darkness that covered the land immediately ends. It is as though someone has turned on the lights in a dark room as the afternoon sun fills the sky with light. At the same time, an earthquake hits the land of Judea splitting rocks and opening tombs. In addition, while only a few priests observe it at the time, the curtain that separates the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies is torn in two. Finally, at the resurrection of Christ, well known, OT believers are given their resurrected bodies and they appear to select individuals in the city of Jerusalem before they are taken to heaven like Enoch and Elijah. Then Matthew tells us that the Roman centurion and his soldiers, when they saw the way Jesus died, surrounded by the mocking crowds, the darkness that covered the land suddenly turned to light and the powerful earthquake that occurred at his death, were terrified and declared, “Surely this was the Son of God.” All of these signs are pointing ahead to the radical change that has occurred with the death of Jesus. Let’s consider each in turn.

First, the sudden ending of the darkness and appearance of the sun at the death of Jesus points towards the satisfaction of God’s wrath by the death of Jesus. If the darkness were a sign of God’s displeasure with the world for killing his Son, then the darkness would have commenced at his death. However, the darkness ends with his death and light comes. The darkness is a picture of God’s wrath being placed upon the Son and the light is the sign of the benefit we receive by that death. Is this not a powerful symbol of what Christ has done by his death? He, by dying, rescues men from the darkness of Satan’s kingdom, from the blindness of sin and sheds his light into our lives. We become heirs of the kingdom of light, rescued out of the kingdom of darkness, not because of anything we have done but because Christ endured the darkness of hell for us.

Second, the earthquake reminds us of the earthquake that accompanies God’s appearances to his people throughout the OT. The earth shook and the rocks split when God came down on Mt. Sinai. The earth quaked when Isaiah had his vision of God in the temple. The psalmists frequently associate earthquakes with the coming of God to save his people. Psalm 68:7-8, “When you went out before your people, O God, when you marched through the wasteland, the land quaked…” God marches out to save his people in the death of his Son and this powerful earthquake marks it.

Third, the curtain in the temple that separates the Holy of Holies is torn in two. This is perhaps the most powerful symbol within all of these symbols. In the temple, the Holy of Holies is the place where God said that he would dwell among his people. Only the high priest could enter it one time each year and then only after going through elaborate sacrifices. The curtain then represents the law that separates man from God because it condemns man in his sin. Here we see how Christ’s death has fulfilled the law with its sacrifices and rituals and regulations as the means by which men can approach God. Here is the physical confirmation of what Jesus said in Matthew 5:17. “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law and the Prophets. I did not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” As Paul says in Romans 10:4, “Christ is the end of the Law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.” The entire OT is about the suffering of Christ and the glories that will follow. He is the sacrifice for sin. He is the water who washes away our uncleanness. He is the priest who represents us. He is the clean food that we eat. He is the temple where we meet with God. He obeyed the moral law and so is our righteousness. He is everything that the Law required for men to know God. We don’t know God or please God by submitting to these laws but by submitting to this Christ who fulfills the entire law on our behalf. Here is the key for reading the OT. Every verse relates to Christ and you cannot relate it to yourself without first relating it to Christ.

Verses 52-53 have this very strange tale of resurrected OT believers appearing to people in Jerusalem after Jesus’ resurrection. We are not explicitly told whether these people had unglorified bodies like Lazarus whom Jesus raised from the dead and then who died later or whether they had the glorified bodies that every believer will get at the final resurrection and so went to heaven after their appearances and continue, like Enoch, Elijah and Moses to live in their resurrected condition in heaven now. However, I think there are two clues that point to the fact that these OT saints received their glorified bodies and continue to live in their resurrected bodies to this day. First, the opening of the tombs by the earthquake is identical to the opening of Jesus’ tomb by an earthquake in 28:2. Jesus’ tomb was not opened to let him out but to let others in to see that his body was gone. Second, Jesus lives in an immortal, resurrected body just like the ones we will receive at the resurrection. He appeared to the disciples. Like Jesus, these saints received their immortal bodies and are now in the presence of God as resurrected humans. They are taken to heaven in resurrected bodies prior to the final resurrection, just like Enoch and Elijah in the OT.

However, why did this happen and why did Matthew record it here? First, Matthew is making clear that every human being who is saved by God is saved by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ through faith. From Adam to the end of the human race, the only people who are going to inherit eternal life will do so by means of the death of Christ. The OT saints don’t go to heaven because they kept the law but because they trusted in God’s promise to send the Messiah. Jesus gave his life for all his friends, both those who lived before he came and those who have lived since. Second, Matthew wants us to know that the ultimate goal of Christ’s death is that all of his people live with him forever in resurrection bodies. Finally, Matthew wants us to know that the final salvation of God is not here and now but in the future. All of the promises of God are fulfilled in and by Jesus because of his death. However, the fullness of those promises will not be experienced until that final great day when Christ returns and raises us from the dead.

The terrified Roman soldiers confessing that Jesus is the Son of God, as they see him give up his spirit, point ahead towards the terrified and confessing church made up of people from every tribe and tongue and language and nation. Christ appears attractive to human beings because of his death. Every converted person is terrified by the wrath of God and then experiences the comfort of knowing that the wrath due to his or her sins has been poured out upon Christ. God is not angry with me because he has spent his anger against me upon his Son. This is the confession of every Christian and the confession of the church of Christ through the centuries until he comes again. Do you, as you look upon Jesus, giving up his spirit tremble in fear at such wrath and then gladly confess, “Surely this is the Son of God”?

The power and glory of Christ is most clearly revealed in the weakness and shame of the cross because…

•  The power of Christ over evil is displayed

•  The power of Christ’s love is fully revealed

•  The power of Christ for the salvation of everyone who believes is exhibited