It is one of the most enigmatic statements in all of Scripture.
Ironically, as you are about to hear in this PODCAST, this mysterious statement follows one of the clearest, most-unambiguous and glorious proclamations in all of Holy Writ.
Two statements: one perplexing, one perfectly understandable, both written by our old friend Peter.
Timely statements each, given that the Easter season is upon us.
Two statements that beg us to answer two compelling questions:
1. Where did Jesus go during the hours between Friday night and Sunday morning?
2. What did Jesus do during those hours between His crucifixion and resurrection?
My friends, you are about to hear an amazing story seldom talked about precisely because it is so enigmatic—“difficult to interpret or understand; mysterious.”
Words that, when understood properly, bless our lives immeasurably.
You are in for an Easter treat.
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As you will hear in this PODCAST, five simple words, easily missed if we hastily read the account as recorded for us by Dr. Luke.
Five astonishing words that unlock this entire episode in the life of the first early church in Jerusalem.
“For more than forty years.”
For more than forty years, everywhere this man went someone had to carry him.
For more than forty years this man never knew the simple pleasure of standing on his own two feet.
For more than forty years this man knew nothing of the joys of going for a walk, let alone a jog.
For more than forty years he could never once kick a soccer ball, hit a baseball, throw a football, or run through the waves as they lapped upon the shore of the Mediterranean.
For more than forty years this man never knew a healthy day—never knew for even a minute what it would be like to have two legs that weren’t as limp as dishrags.
For more than forty years this man had in his legs no feeling, no movement, no sensations of any kind.
For more than forty years this man could go up to the Temple courts to beg, but never into Temple to worship since he was prohibited from doing so in Leviticus 21.
For more than forty years this man knew nothing but the prospect of yet another day spent stretching out his arms, reaching out his hands, and begging for alms.
For more than forty years he was forced to endure being ignored, refused, looked down upon, and judged as a sinner.
Such was the life of one man for more than forty years.
This poor beggar, bereft of health, robbed of any hope of self-respect, devoid of any semblance of a life.
Until this day when Peter and John showed up.
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As you are about to hear in this PODCAST, Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 referenced what he called the single most important event of human history.
And it all centers upon that one-telling-three-word-phrase, “the third day.”
Quite a statement that: “I passed on to you what was most important.”
Most: πρῶτος, a superlative in Greek. A word that means the best, the chief, the first and foremost of all. Meaning that Paul went over and above to point out in the most emphatic way possible that nothing that he could ever, or would ever write would eclipse this one statement in its importance:
“I passed on to you the best—the chief, the first and foremost in importance—fact of all time: Christ died for our sins, just as the Scriptures said. He was buried, and he was raised from the dead on the third day, just as the Scriptures said.”
A most-important, and most-specific chronology — not to be overlooked.
In this case, the chronology is the story.
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Exactly at That.Very.Moment when Jesus breathed His last…
Precisely to the second when Jesus exclaimed, “It is finished. Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit”…
This happened:
“Then the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.”
Do you have any idea what that means? It will take the remainder of this discussion for us even to begin to understand What.That.Means.
Why did God tear the veil?
It was obviously God who ripped it. No human hand could possibly tear it. That veil was an elaborately woven fabric that stood 60 feet high, equal in height to a seven-story building. No one could tear that curtain. Only God could tear that curtain.
Which only amplifies the question, Why?
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They say that “For every sigh, there’s a psalm.” As you are about to hear in this PODCAST, they are 100% correct.
What an absolutely, beautifully inspired collection of very real, honest, soul-soaring, gut-wrenching human expressions is contained within its 150 chapters.
So many verses of its 150 songs are profoundly personal prayers that you and I can pray right back to God, giving us an immediate connection with the principle players in the biblical drama.
Psalms, the single most emotion-filled book in the Bible. Yes, indeed. For every sigh, there IS a psalm.
If variety is the spice of life, then the Book of Psalms
is a pretty spicy book. One that includes hymns of praise, thanksgiving, godly wisdom and sound theology, expressions of our doubts and fears balanced by an unshakable faith in God through good times and bad. Imprecatory psalms that are cries for God’s justice and vengeance in an unjust world. Songs of lament that give voice to the many challenges of our painful lives.
There are also historical psalms that remind the worshipper of God’s faithfulness in the past. And for our purposes in this podcast, prophetical psalms. Songs that flood our souls with the confident hope that God will keep His many precious promises in future, just as He has in the past.
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Caiaphas, the high priest that year, must have been fit to be tied.
Well, somewhat so.
As you will hear in this PODCAST, it was Passover. The Holy City, Jerusalem, was teaming with pilgrims. The all-important 3 PM Passover sacrifice at the Temple was fast-approaching.
It was arguably single most financially-flourishing day of the year (second only, perhaps, to the Day of Atonement) as far as the corrupt Temple Industrial Complex over which Caiaphas presided was concerned. There was money to be made this day. Lots and lots of money.
But the heavens seemed to conspire against Caiaphas.
Of all the luck (bad luck indeed), a most-rare, hauntingly-eerie atmospheric anomaly threatened to diminish severely Caiaphas’ shady haul of ill-gotten shekels.
At 12 PM, high noon, a mere three hours before the afternoon sacrifice, the sky turned ominously dark. If it stayed that way, there would be no 3 PM Passover Lamb sacrificed that day.
Well, according to Matthew 27 — Read ’em and weep, Caiaphas.
“At noon, darkness fell across the whole land until 3 o’clock.”
A darkness that drove everyone away from the cross as they scrambled for shelter from the encroaching gloom of that midday backness.
Coincidence? No way!
Now there would be no Passover Lamb sacrificed at 3 PM on this day.
Or would there?
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In this PODCAST, we are now in that six-hour window of time — between 9 AM and 3 PM.
9 AM when the Romans nailed Jesus to His cross; 3 PM, that moment when Jesus finally succumbed to His brutal beatings, His massive blood loss, and the tortures of crucifixion — finally and mercifully to die.
Within that six-hour window, Jesus spoke seven times. The final words of His earthly life pre-resurrection. As we noted last week, a complete, seven-sayings, last lingering look into Jesus’ beautiful, sizable, and irresistible soul.
The first two of these sayings we discussed last week.
We’ll consider the middle two now.
And the final three we’ll explain next week.
Let me give you a heads-up. Get yourself ready for a rollercoaster of a ride tonight. This because the first of the two that we consider now is without a doubt the most emotional of the seven. I dare say, this may well be the single most emotional scene in the entire Bible. I’ll leave that for you to decide.
The second of the two statements that we consider now is equally without a doubt the most dramatic of the seven. I dare say, this is the single most dramatic scene in the entire Bible. No question about that.
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As you are about to hear in this PODCAST, the fact of the matter is this: Jesus said seven statements, this as His life was literally dripping out of Him drop by precious drop. Each one of the seven — when considered separately — tells a most-dramatic tale. All of the seven — when considered collectively — give us an unparalleled insight into the heart of Jesus.
It was, after all, Jesus who much earlier in His ministry said this:
“For whatever is in your heart determines what you say” (Matthew 12).
On yet another occasion, Luke 6, Jesus said,
“What you say flows from what is in your heart.”
So if we want to know what is in Jesus’ heart, we need look no further than what Jesus said. His words.
And as we are about to learn, what Jesus said from the cross, in the closing moments of His storied life, reveals perhaps most clearly of all exactly what was in His sizable heart. What a beautiful heart His was and is.
So join me now at the foot of the cross as we hear for ourselves the final words of Jesus as His innocent and holy life comes to a violently calamitous close.
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It is called, appropriately enough, the Via Dolorosa, Latin for “The Way of Sorrows.”
For Jesus, it absolutely was a way of sorrows — every single excruciatingly painful step of it, from the Antonia Fortress (where Pilate sentenced Him), to Golgotha (where Jesus’ execution awaited Him).
His name is Pilate, as in Pontius Pilate — P-i-l-a-t-e, not p-i-l-o-t — even though Pilate did manage to fly himself right into middle of a maelstrom of religious and political corruption and compromise with devastating consequences.
In this PODCAST, as we now approach Jesus’ impending crucifixion, the greatest irony of this entire sad saga is that the whole thing is motivated by one thing: self-interest.
As we learned in last week’s podcast, on the Jewish side of things, the entire motivation behind the High Priest Caiaphas and the 70-member Sanhedrin in wanting to kill Jesus was the realization that He posed an existential threat to their power, position, prestige, and possessions, all of them paid for with their obscene wealth and ill-gotten gains — the chief thieves, these religious leaders were, in a den of thieves. Which is what, on their watch, the Temple, The House, God’s House, “My Father’s House” (as Jesus called it), had become.
As we will learn this week, on Roman side of things, the spineless Pilate will collapse like the house of cards that he was because he feared losing his title and power as the Roman Governor of the province of Judea. All of this while killing a man who was utterly, totally, completely and absolutely selfless. Somoen who had not one strand of the DNA of self-interest woven anywhere in the fabric of His sizable soul.
We’re talking their willingness to murder a gentle, peaceable, innocent man — not to mention their Messiah — if that’s what it took to maintain their coveted positions.
Make no mistake about this — Pilate KNEW that Jesus was absolutely innocent, and yet sentenced Him to die anyway, in the most unimaginably barbaric, brazenly humiliating, excruciatingly torturous death ever devised by man.
You talk about Jesus looking out over a vast multitude of precious people with overwhelming compassion in His heart, while lamenting that they were like sheep without a shepherd? Well, these were their shepherds.
Shepherds both religious (Caiphas) and political (Pilate). Unprincipled men who unconscionably used and abused their helpless little lambs for their own personal gain.
Just like they do today. Religiously and Politically. It is today as it was then.
Well, last week we met their religious shepherds.
The time has now come for us to meet their political shepherds. Most specifically, Pontius Pilate, the man who has lived long in infamy as the man who caved to political pressure and who, against own convictions, sentenced Jesus to death.
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It is one of the most enigmatic statements in all of Scripture.
