CROSS TO COMMISSION | The Message of The Cross | Matthew 27:45-56 | Philip Anthony Mitchell

If you're a guest, we want to welcome you to 28-19 Church to the Sacred Bliss.

“These sacred gatherings are imperfect by the belief we're striving for, the spread of the gospel”

and the multiplying of disciples. This is the great commission of the Lord Jesus Christ. And to all of our digital disciples watching live, cross the nation and around the world. In these final hours at a church age, we pray for you all family.

The extensions of the Kingdom of God and the extensions of our family, 28-19, every continent

on the planet, wherever you are, represent the work of this great house, this growing global family of end-time disciples that God is raising up in this hour.

“And if you're not a follower of Christ, you crept into this room or crept into this child.”

You welcome you to the sacred place, you want you to know that you can belong before you believe.

And you can be amongst us before you believe.

And we pray for you, like many who follow last week, that a moment would come in one of these sacred gatherings, you would feel the conviction of the Holy Spirit, whom we need to Christ Himself, and you would pivot before time is right out on you for tomorrow's promised to know man.

“And in the day you hear a gospel, heart and not your heart, for someone in this room today might”

be the day of salvation for you. We are near the end of a three-year teaching through the Book of Matthew, and our final series called Cross to Commission, which we are studying Matthew 26 to 28 together and landing the plane on this series on Resurrection Sunday. Our text today is coming from Matthew 27, verses 45 through 56.

Spirit of the Living God. Give your way, as the word that you offered is proclaimed through this week in Earth and vessel. A waking in this hour, your sons and daughters of the kingdom, across America and around the world, open our eyes and stir our hearts to prayer and to mission.

Let us feel the weight of this text that calls us to remembrance and to action. Touch the heart of the believer and trouble the unbeliever, ask in the mighty and the majestic and the matchless name of our soul and come and King, the Lord Jesus Christ, and all of God's people said amen, amen, amen, amen. Family this morning as I stand here to proclaim God's word to you.

Our nation is in war, but adversaries in the Middle East, a war that has stirred opinions from both sides, both those who see this war as prophetic for filling biblical prophecy and those who cry hatred against such wars. Right now, as I'm talking to you, not only is there war being fought right now with our nation, but I wonder how many people right now are paying attention to the events that's

happening in history, that this war right now is set in place at a time that we are living in the final hours of the church age, that this war will be remembered amongst events

on humanity that is coming down to the end, a clock that began with the text that we approached this morning as a spiritual family.

“In our history, there have been very few empires like the empire of Rome who ruled over”

a part of the world from India to Africa for some 1500 years during that period, it is reported

in history that Rome executed and crucified some 300,000 to some 2 million people during

his days of its empire. And during that time, those are nameless faces of men mostly and some women who have been crucified and have come in gone and for the most part, none of us know their names, their lives have had no great bearing on history to this day. And all we had was reports of this barbaric form of execution that Rome had perfected,

that was engineered by men, the most evil form of capital punishment ever designed until 1968 in an archaeological day when they found a skeleton to give testimony to this barbaric form of execution, give me my image, control room. When this ankle bone of a late 20s, something year old was found in a day against Jerusalem, has set it in spike through his ankle bone, testifying to the barbaric brutality of execution

through the capital punishment of crucifixion that Rome has strung up some millions and millions of people who were executed this way. His name was also found when they found his skeleton, but his name has no bearing on society. His name did nothing in history, nobody talks about his name, nobody celebrates his name. He is unimportant in the annals of history, however, there was a man that was crucified

during the temporal role. There was a man who was executed during the time of Rome who, because of that man, all of society split around of his life into years BC before Christ, and years AD and New Dominoid Latin for the year of our Lord. There was one man that Rome did execute that had a great effect on history.

That man who we come to in the text, between where we are right now a history and where we

“come to in the text, the most important event in human history is what we approach right”

now in the text, the event that started the time clock that has calmed him back was right now the time clock that is soon to come to an end. How Christ was arrested, tried, condemned to death, how he was abused and abandoned and led out to be executed by Rome and soldiers. He was helped by a man named Simon who helped him, carried that cross to the top of

Gargatha and how four soldiers nailed the body of Christ to a wooden cross beam and hung

up the Lord on a cross beam and left him there to die between two criminals in the first

century AD, spiked through the wrists and spiked through the ankle bone and then what

“we come to in our text is the fulfillment of the most important event in human history”

as Christ hung on that cross between two criminals, Matthew writes in Matthew chapter 27 and verse 45, "Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour, Mark Matthew now punctuates the time in which Christ was hanging on the cross. He leaves out a detail that Mark would give us that Mark writes that Christ was crucified

at the third hour of the beginning of the Jewish time clock, which means Christ was crucified

at 9 a.m. and then Matthew says from the sixth hour darkness came over all of the land

understand that at nine o'clock, Christ is hung up on the cross and Jesus hangs in the light

for three or four hours while he's hanging in the light for three hours the Lord will speak from the cross, from the cross the Lord will ask for forgiveness for the man who persecuted him and the man who nailed him to that cross, demonstrating for you and I, the Christian ethic of forgiveness in his highest stream, reminding you and I that we have no right to hold anybody in our heart, so nobody has done anything to you to the level of crucifixion and

“which you feel you have to write the whole anybody in their heart, so I'm abused to rape”

from molestation to betrayal, Christ has demonstrated for you and I that your heart can never

be an apartment for anybody, we must evict everybody from our hearts, so when we look upon the cross we have no right to hold people in unforgiveness, in those first three hours by Jesus hung in the light, he also looks down in his mother and he says to his mother, mother be whole your son and he says to John, John be whole your mother, demonstrating for us the power of biblical community, the future of the beauty in the church he was about

“to form, reminding us that all of us need people in our lives, we all need comfort, we all”

need community, nobody will make it to the end by ourselves and on the cross he looks

over to a repentant criminal and he says today you will be with me in paradise reminding us of the Christian theology that for the one who is in Christ to die, a Christ is to be present with the Lord, given us the theology that our life goes beyond death and that we have hope beyond this life and not even a funeral can rob the believer of the hope that has been promised for us in the Lord Jesus Christ.

“And then at 12 noon Matthew tells us that an ominous darkness comes over the land of Palestine”

Christ goes silent and the sky above him goes black as God supernaturally sends on the land a darkness that covered all of Palestine, this was not any clips, this was not a sandstorm, this was God Almighty turning out the lights of the sun using creation to grieve over the tree tall, who had now been hanging on that cross for three hours and now blackness comes over the land. God in the Old Testament testifies, I feel the spirit of his miraculous power over the elements

of nature, when he prophesized through a prophet named Amos, 700 years before Christ was crucified, when he says through a prophet named Amos in Amos chapter 8 of verse 9 and on that day, speaking of what was coming 700 years later, to clear the Lord, God, I will make the sun go down at noon, biblical prophecy being fulfilled, not found in the Quran, not found in the prologue great place, not found in any religious book, I just keep showing you how

hundreds of prophecies in the Old Testament have come to pass accurately in the era in which we live, God prophesized 700 years before the day we expose in our text and on that day the clear's God, I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight, 700 years he fulfills that prophecy when at 12 o'clock in the afternoon as the Lamb of God is strong out on the cross, God turns off the light of the sun, blackness comes over

the Lamb, the people standing there watching Christ bleed out, I'll confuse that in the middle

it must be fear and some of their hearts that it is black over Palestine, God now not only

use in creation to grieve the dying creator, but now God also use in creation to speak from the cross, why, because all throughout the Old Testament darkness is synonymous with judgment, and if you read from Isaiah and multiple prophets you will see that when darkness shows up in the Old Testament, judgment shows up in the Old Testament, and now God is speaking from the cross, not only using creation to grieve the creator, but now God is speaking

and message from the cross that He's using that blackness to send a message to all humanity

“that judgment now was coming upon humanity, but judgment of what?”

Judgment of the thing you and I love and play around with so much sin, and from the cross, God declares judgment upon sin, judgment upon all works of an equity, that from the cross, God declares his hatred for sin, that what Christ is feeling and what God is doing, He is using that blackness to speak to mankind, His judgment on sin that He's now laying upon the back of His Son upon the cross, and there is Christ hanging now in darkness,

and as Christ is hanging in darkness, He is silent because what's happening right now is Christ now is becoming sin, Jesus, for you and I, He's so overwhelmed by what's happening, He can't even speak, that for almost three hours He says nothing, as the Father now makes the Son, sin for you and me, the Apostle Paul in the future would write about this moment

and second Corinthians 5 verse 20, when He says, "Therefore you and I are ambassadors for

“Christ, you should represent Him, God making His appeal through us, why we employ you on behalf”

of Christ, why be reconciled to God, stop playing with God, be sold out to God, stop running from God, why, what did He do for our sake He made Him to be sin, who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God, so on the cross in the second two hours of pitch blackness, the Father now is laying upon the Son, the sins of all humanity, past, present, future and right there in that moment, Christ now is absorbing sin, Christ

now becomes sin as He's hanging on the cross, Christ will now feel the pain of becoming sin. He will feel the pain of absorbing the sin of man, what Christ's feeling was worse than the nails, was worse than His beating, was worse than His curching, was worse than His mocking,

“was worse than the crown of the ones, the worst thing Christ felt on that day was absorbing”

all your sin, debt, and mine, the man who had never known sin, the man who had never committed

sin, now in this moment He not only absorbs sin, He becomes sin, now knows for you and I, in our sinful nature, who played with sin and loves sin and on holy in nature, we don't understand the significance of this moment, and only takes those of us who have grown a maturity, who hate our sinful nature, who be frustrated with our own mistakes, man, I can even, I can barely bear my own flesh, let it all try to bear the sins of all humanity, every man, woman and

child for all eternity, trying to bear the sins, man we can't even conceive the weight of what Jesus felt in that moment, but the evidence that the Lord was feeling the pain of becoming sin is what happens next and for us 46, that at about the ninth hour, that is three hours later,

That is being interpreted in our English language, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

“I feel the spirit of God. The Lord now shouts at the top of His lungs, "My God, my God!"”

Why have you forsaken me? The Lord is shouting about the abandonment of the Father, because now God who the Scripture says in her back, "Can not look upon sin!" He now has to turn His back on the sun, and now the Father and the Son who have been in perfect fellowship for the endless ages of eternity.

So the first and only time, now the fellowship has been broken!

Why? Because the God is so holy, He cannot look upon sin!

“So now, in some hard to understand theological situation,”

God turns His back on the sun, and what the sun feels is a momentarily abandonment from the Father. Now for the first time, there is a breach between Jesus and the Father, and now Christ feels,

for the first time what we are born into, separation from God. And because He feels that separation

from God, He now tries out into blackness from that cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" So first He tries this out, because He's feeling the separation from His Father. But He also tries this out, because in His wisdom He's preaching from the cross. Jews are standing all around Him who know the Old Testament, and Jesus shalls from the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" He is actually from the cross preaching His own identity

upon the cross. So those who mock Him and did not know He was the Son of God. He closer them the

first verse of Psalm 22, which was a maizeanic Psalm that prophesied about the death of the Messiah,

the Son of God. So as He shouts, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" What those Jews

“would have heard and remembered was Psalm 22 verse 1. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Why are you so far from saving me?" From the words of my groaning. And what we have here in this Psalm is that theological thing called the law of double reference, where a person is writing by inspiration of the Spirit, but also prophesied about something that was coming in the future. David writing this Psalm by the Spirit, not realizing He's actually writing about the future crucifixion of the Son of God. So as Christ is saying, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" The people had the bottom should have

remembered the Psalm, and immediately they should have known, "Oh, my God, the person we just sprung up was the promise Messiah, the promise Son of God." They should have remembered other verses like verse 6 to 8, but I am a worm and not a man scorned by mankind and despised by people, "Oh, who see me?" They make mouths at me, they wagged their heads. He trust in his Lord, let him deliver him. Let him rescue him for he delights in him.

They should have seen verse 14 through 15. I am poured out like water. All my bones are out of joy. My heart is like wax. It is melted within my breast. My strength is dried up like a pot's hurt. And my tongue sticks to my jaws. You lay me in the dust of the earth. They should remember

And so Jesus is preaching from the cross identifying himself as the Messiah, and those who had

any common sense would have heard that immediately know this was the Son of God. But I want to draw your attention to the word "my." Not only is Jesus saying "my God, my God, why have you forsaken me because he feels separation?"

“Watch. That only is he preaching from the cross's identity. But the word "my" is very important”

that even in him feeling abandoned, he still puts ownership in front of God. He didn't say "God, God, why have you abandoned me?" But "my God, my God, why have you abandoned me?"

Showing us the Christian ethic of what it feels like to be in a jam.

Or to be in a season when God feels distant from you. And when you feel like he's not answering your prayers or not moving or behalf. But does not rob himself of the confession that he's still watch and fellowship with him, that he has watches where trust in the person who has turned his back, that even when this is over, I will be resurrected and restored back to fellowship with my God. This is a reminder for you and I that in those seasons when you're going through hardship

and trials and difficulty. And all of us have felt what I felt like to feel like the Lord is soft from me. The Lord is not answering my prayers. The Lord is allowing me to go through too much trials and tribulation that I do not allow my emotions to override my theology. That although I may be in pain and will be in pain, I will not be forsaken. This is you feeling like the Lord is not listening to me.

“But in your theology, remember what he has not abandoned me.”

So he cries out my God, my God, demonstrating trust in the one who right now he cannot feel. Verse 47. Some of the bystanders, hearing it said, this man is calling for Elijah. And one of them at once ran and took a sponge and filled it with sour wine and put it on a read and gave it to him to drink. But the other said, "Wait, let us see whether not Elijah will come to save him." The word, my God, my God, in Hebrew sounds very saying close to the word,

Elijah, in Hebrew. Elijah was a prophet who got raptured up who never died. A guy that got

took from earth and brought him to heaven, a man who never saw physical death. These bystanders are still mocking the Lord. They are listening to him cry, Eli, Eli, and thinking he's crying for Elijah. And then they said, "Well, let us wait to see whether or not Elijah will come from heaven." And they are my Jesus in a situation he cannot escape. They think that he is hanging on the cross because it nails, but he's hanging there because of love absorbing the sin death of

Europe and mine. They misinterpret what he was saying. And because they misinterpret what he's saying from the cross, they respond to his words wrong. Family just happens all the time in your life in mind when we hear the word of God preached to us. And we misinterpret what God is saying. Or we misinterpret what we are reading. And as resulted that we close our heart to the revelation that we should be getting in that moment. That what should be happening is they should have

“heard what he was saying. And remember Psalm 22 that what I'm saying to you is whenever the word”

is being preached to you with fidelity and with integrity and theological clarity that is the opportunity for you to repent. It's an opportunity for you to be changed. It's an opportunity for you to be challenged. It's the opportunity for you to be corrected to be inspired to be encouraged to be coached, to be left back to the world, to be strengthened, to be renewed, to be guided, to be led, to be lifted, to be healed. That dear things that the Holy Spirit intends what happened in your life

to give Jesus a drink. The rest continue to mock him while he's dying. And the next verse,

“one of the most important verses in all the scripture, verse 50. And Jesus cried out again with a loud”

voice and yielded up his spirit. What help us Lord? Now Matthew does not record what Jesus said that last time. What John did. John recorded what Jesus said in that last moment of his life.

It is finished. It's what Jesus cried out from the cross. It is finished

that in this moment, as Christ hung in the cross, His last words was, it is finished.

“He had accomplished a mission for which He was sent. For He set up His own life that He came”

to die, to make a way of escape for humanity who cannot deal with your sin, get for themselves. And in this moment, Christ yells to all humanity, it is finished. I have now paid the full get of sin and has satisfied the wrath of God towards humanity. The old covenant has been satisfied. The sacrificial system has been satisfied. The fulfillment of the law has been satisfied. I have finished the work that I have been given. And now, mankind has the opportunity

to receive righteousness, watch, so that when they die, they can be justified before Holy God. That without this moment, no person can be justified before God. No person is headed to heaven. You said, "Well, fast away." What about your Old Testament saints? Man, Dave was the same recipients of grace, just like we are right now. Because you and I live in time. God does not live in time. It's why God says Jesus was the lamb slain from the foundation of the

world. So that, although this was coming in time, those in the Old Testament who placed their faith in God, he credited to them. The grace of the cross in AD 33 was credited back.

“Retroactively to anybody that placed their faith in God. That's why we know Abraham is in glory.”

And David is in glory, and Luke is in glory, and Esther is in glory. And that's why the Scriptures had David or Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him.

And now, in the first century, in verse 50, the greatest event in human history has taken place.

The event that settled the clock that we are on right now, the death of the Lamb of God, that made a way of escape from hell for you and I, and created an opportunity for you to be seen as righteous before God, without this death, no pardon for you and I, and I just want you to people in the Texas says after he cried out, he gave up his spirit, meaning nobody took his life.

like your death in mind. They write about his death with a theology of voluntaryness to say that

“the Lord was not, his life was not taken from him, but when he saw you and when he saw me, he laid”

his life down. You got to keep all the details in the text. Anybody else being executed like this would have been exhausted by this time. But Matthew tells us in detail he cried out with a loud voice,

the show was that he still had to strengthen keep hanging there if he wanted to, but when he was ready,

when he was ready, when he had finished absorbing sin, when he had done the work that the father said

“to do, he said it is finished. Now into your hands Lord, I commit my spirit. That's so powerful to me.”

The Lord stayed alive long enough to deal with your sin death. And when he paid the price for your sin and fall, to now I'm finished, I took care of Philip, I took care of James, I took care of Milton, I took care of Ronda, I took care of dog, I took care of my children, now into your hands Lord, I commit my spirit.

“He stayed alive long enough to make sure that when you die you would remain alive.”

He stayed alive long enough to make sure that my body would not remain in a grave smile. He stayed alive long enough to take care of what your good behavior, your church attendance,

your morality could never take care of.

Let's finish the text and then with the last three hours. The last bit of time, when Christ said it is finished, he gave up his spirit now God from heaven unleashes apocalyptic events on the earth to make sure the whole world knows that I just crucified my son. I'm going to make sure that my son is spoken for through the power of the natural order for 51 after the death of Christ and Matthew said behold that his pay attention, the current of the temple was torn

into from the top to the bottom and the earth shook and the rocks were split and the tombs were open and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep all my God. Was raised from the dead and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection, they went into the holy city of Jerusalem and appeared to many

current sick or night impossible to rip with hands and separated the holy is placed in the temple

“from every place else and once a year a priest would have to go behind that curtain to make”

a temporary atomant for the sins of man. That current represents the separation of God from human beings. So God now in the death of Christ takes his finger and he rips the current from the top

all the way down to the bottom.

Signify it to all humanity no longer in my presence dwell away from you. Now all people have access directly to me. The Christian has access. The repentant sinner has access.

“That's why the unknown writer of people who says we should approach his throne.”

Because now because of the death of Christ you and I watch the word and I love his word

have access. This sinful man from Queens, New York. I have access to a holy God who now allows me to come into his presence through a whisper and prayer because blood made impossible for me to go in there. How then can we see prayer as a chore and not as a chore and a liberty that any place,

“any time, anywhere, and any posture, I can go into the presence of my Savior.”

No matter what is going on in my life. God shook the whole earth when Christ died. That people in Jerusalem would have known. This was not some ordinary man, and people in the other side of the world would have felt something has happened in the year A D 33. It shook the entire globe. And he will shake it again when Christ returns and glory and power to set up his kingdom

and Jerusalem. He will shake the earth again when the stars fall from heaven. And then he says because of a massive earthquake, tombs that stayed above ground shattered on Friday that there is a period in the text, which means it happened on Friday. The period points is then two days later to Sunday, but Matthew said then after Jesus is raised, those bodies came out of those tombs. And they walked into the city.

Not going to do our family members. I was once dead. Some way somehow I am alive. God testifying in the cross. It's power to deal with death

That's why there's no need to fear death. Because if we are in Christ, we will not sleep.

“No, without body seed decay. There will more than my funeral while I'm walking the streets of gold.”

So we fear hope. So what? This is the power of the cross. It is the message of the cross. And when the Centaurian, the boss of those who have persecuted Christ, those who are with him,

keeping watch over Jesus saw the earthquake and would have taken place. They will fill with

awe and even the ones who nailed him to that cross, testified of his identity. Truly, this was

“the son of God. And I don't have to fight to prove my identity to not body.”

The Lord knows how to vindicate awe his children. Make all the videos about me you want. We see in the end the Lord knows how to vindicate awe his children.

All his real prophets, all his true servants. We'll see you in the end.

Let's see who was real and who was fake. And there was also many women there looking on from a distance

“who had followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to him. Among whom were Mary Magdalene,”

who he cast seven demons out of. And Mary, the mother of James and Joseph and the mother of the sons of Zevity, James and John. While men abandoned him, women stayed close to him. They were faithful. They were devoted. They were dedicated. And I say to all my women, this is what Jesus wants of you. And I say to all my men, these are the women we should honour. That we should love them for their devotion and not just only part of abuse them with

infatuation. That where we see godly women like this. They honour them. And there is the message of the cross. There is right here in the text. The message of the cross. That in the cross, god condemns sin. That in the cross, god speaks, help. And that on the cross, he hung up the saviour of the world. And that you and I should have a unified response to the cross.

Then when we see it on top of a steeple, or swinging from somebody's neck, or tattoo, or somebody's arm, wherever we see the cross, it should give us a hatred for sin, a hatred for the thing that put Christ there. And it should speak to us, a type of hope for the future. That whenever I see the cross, I see the image of god's love for me and for all humanity. That when I see the cross, I see the thing I must despise.

And when I see the cross, I see the one who absorbed my sin debt, that the only response to the cross

is a life fully surrendered. Any other response. So unacceptable.

“So father, the name of the one you hung up on the cross.”

In the name of your show of the king.

I pray, God, the unbeliever, listen to me right now with throw themselves down at the foot of the cross and cry out for mercy. And for the forgiveness of their sins,

“let's day die and be separated from your enjudgment for all of their life for the endless ages of eternity.”

And father, God, I pray for the son and daughter under the sound of my voice that we would look upon God, the cross, and from that place we would begin to hate the sin and our own hearts, the sin, of our own mouths, the sin, of our own thoughts, the sin, of our own lives.

“And from the cross we would have hope for our future.”

And from the cross we would be compelled to live for the one who fully absorbed our sin debt. The one who died in the dark, that we may live in the light. May our eyes and our hearts and our lives be burned by the message of the cross.

And we'd never be the same.

I ask in the mighty and the majestic and the matchless name of our soon-coming king, the Lord Jesus Christ. If you're thankful for what Jesus did on the cross, so mighty take the roof off this place and give him praise and his forgiveness. Amen!