Day 12 of 14 — The Crucifixion

Last night, Jesus sat at a table with His disciples and told them that His body would be broken and His blood poured out for the new covenant. He washed the feet of the man who already betrayed Him. He prayed in Gethsemane until His sweat fell like drops of blood, and He asked the Father if there was any other way. Judas came with a crowd, and identified Jesus with a kiss. The disciples ran away, as Jesus was dragged before the religious leaders and then before Pilate, and the same people who days earlier shouted Hosanna were now shouting “Crucify Him.”

“They stripped Him and put a scarlet robe on Him. And after twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on His head, and a reed in His right hand; and they knelt down before Him and mocked Him, saying, ‘Hail, King of the Jews!’ They spat on Him, and took the reed and began to beat Him on the head.”
(Matthew 27:28-30)

The soldiers mocked what they didn’t understand. They put Him in a robe and gave Him a reed for a scepter, and all of the mockery was accidentally true. He was the King. The crown they pressed into His scalp was the only crown He would wear before the resurrection, and He wore it willingly.

“And when they had crucified Him, they divided up His garments among themselves by casting lots.” (Matthew 27:35)

David wrote about this in Psalm 22, a thousand years before crucifixion.

“They divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.” (Psalm 22:18)

The soldiers at the foot of the cross had no idea their actions had been codified as Scripture ten centuries before. They were just dividing the belongings of a condemned man, and in doing so, they completed a picture God had been painting since before David wrote a single word.

“Now from the sixth hour darkness fell upon all the land until the ninth hour.” (Matthew 27:45)

For three hours in the middle of the day, the sky went black. God covered the scene in darkness while His Son bore the full weight of what Isaiah described seven hundred years before, the iniquity of us all falling on Him. What happened on the cross in those three hours goes beyond what any human could’ve witnessed. The Son of God was bearing the sins of His people under the wrath of His Father, and the darkness was the visible sign of something invisible taking place between the Father and the Son.

“About the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?’ that is, ‘My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?’” (Matthew 27:46)

Those are the words David wrote in Psalm 22. The cry of abandonment. The voice of the suffering servant now comes out of the mouth of the man hanging on the cross. Jesus isn’t just quoting Scripture, He’s living it. The abandonment David described, Jesus is experiencing. The Father turned His face from the Son because the Son now bears the sin that the Father’s holiness can’t look at.

“And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit. And behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth shook and the rocks were split.” (Matthew 27:50-51)

The veil that separated the Holy of Holies from the rest of the temple tore from top to bottom. God Himself opened the way that had been closed since the fall, and He did it at the exact moment His Son died. The barrier between God and man that every lamb and every sacrifice temporarily addressed was now permanently removed by the death of the Lamb that all of them had pointed toward.

“Now the centurion, and those who were with him keeping guard over Jesus, when they saw the earthquake and the things that were happening, became very frightened and said, ‘Truly this was the Son of God!’” (Matthew 27:54)

The centurion, a pagan soldier who would’ve had no knowledge of the Old Testament, looked at the dead body of Jesus and came to the conclusion that this was the Son of God.

Everything we’ve walked through for eleven days has arrived here. The seed of the woman promised in the garden has crushed the serpent’s head, and the substitute God provided on Moriah has given His life. The Passover Lamb whose blood covers the people of God has been slain. The servant Isaiah described has been pierced and crushed, and the cry David wrote a thousand years before there was a cross to cry from has been cried over Jerusalem. The One who set His face toward the city has reached the end of the road He chose to walk.

Tomorrow is the silence of Saturday.