Transcript

When Bill Arnold noticed two men with flashlights moving suspiciously around their dairy pasture just before midnight on July 24, 2002, Bill ventured out to confront the intruders. As he approached the shadowed figures, a familiar voice broke through the darkness.

“Is that you Bill?” came the voice of Sean Isgan, an engineer and long-time acquaintance. “There’s been an accident in the Quecreek Mine. Nine men are missing. We haven’t got much time.” Bill’s reply came immediately, “How can I help?”

Little did Bill Arnold realize as he entered the darkness that evening that the next 5 days of his life would center on helping save the lives of 9 others, and his farm would be transformed into the site of the largest rescue effort in Pennsylvania in nearly 30 years.

On that night in July, 2002, coal miners working in the Quecreek (cue-creek) Mine in Somerset County, relying on outdated maps, mistakenly bored through a wall that they thought was hundreds of feet thick. It was not.

As a result, 72 million gallons of frigid water rushed into the mine. 18 miners scrambled to escape a watery grave. Nine could not get out of the mine.

A rescue operation swung into furious motion immediately. The nine miners were trapped 240 feet below the surface in a chamber that was only 4-feet high.

The first thing rescuers did was drill holes to provide air to the men. Others worked to drill holes to pump water out of the mine.

Finally, at 10:15 p.m. Saturday, July 27, rescuers using a drill punched a hole into the mine about 300 feet from the miners.

They lowered a microphone and speaker in the hole and learned all nine were alive.

Then using a 22-inch-wide cage-type cylinder the rescuers were able to retrieve the miners one at a time. They had been trapped underground for over 77 hours, but all nine miners survived. The site at Bill Arnold’s farm is now a memorial to the rescue.

Like those trapped miners were helpless, cut off, in darkness, completely dependent on someone else to rescue them, unable to change their own circumstance, that is our spiritual condition outside of Christ in our sins.

But Christ came to this dark world to save sinners, to rescue us from our helpless and hopeless state by His Cross and resurrection.

And at the Cross, as the Savior was made sin for us, making the sacrifice to provide us with salvation, the Father turned and forsook His Son, causing Christ to cry out, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?”

Matthew 27:45: “Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour.”

Mark 15:25 tells us, “And it was the third hour, and they crucified Him.” Our Lord was crucified at the third hour, which was 9:00am.

And for the first three hours of Christ being on the cross, it was normal daylight.

But then Matthew tells us that there was darkness over all the land from the sixth hour until the ninth hour, meaning that from noon until 3:00pm, for 3 hours, there was a darkness over the land and midday became midnight.

Matthew writes that beginning at noon “there was darkness over all the land.”

This begs the question: How widespread was the darkness? Was it just over all the land of Israel? Or was it global darkness, over all the land of the whole earth?

To answer this question, first it’s important to note that the Greek word for “land” (ge) in this verse is translated as “earth” in 165 times of 213 New Testament occurrences.

Luke 23:44 is one of those instances regarding the same event, “And it was about the sixth hour, and there was a darkness over all the EARTH until the ninth hour.”

The word “earth” is translated from the exact same Greek word, translated as “land” in Matthew 27:45.

Also, Luke 23:45 further states, “And the sun was darkened.” Since the sun was darkened, I believe that means the whole world was darkened.

So between the word “land,” referring to the earth, and the sun being darkened, we can say that it was global darkness. And as Christ was dying for the sins of the whole world, so the whole world went dark.

Also, Phlegon, a Roman historian at that time wrote: “In the fourth year of the 202nd Olympiad, there was an extraordinary eclipse of the sun: at the sixth hour, the day turned into dark night, so that the stars in heaven were seen; and there was an earthquake.”

This darkness, however, was not any natural eclipse. This was a supernatural darkness brought on by the fact that Christ was made sin for us at the Cross.

This darkness was when the Father was pouring out His wrath and crushing His Son as prophesied in Isaiah 53:10: “Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin.”

Darkness in Scripture often represents judgment. Such as we read in Amos 8:8-9, when God’s judgment and punishment was prophesied for Israel:

“Shall not the land tremble for this, and every one mourn that dwelleth therein?…And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord GOD, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day.”

You see God’s judgment also in the three days of darkness that was brought upon Egypt in the ninth plague.

Exodus 10:21-23 reads, “And the LORD said unto Moses, Stretch out thine hand toward heaven, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, even darkness which may be felt. And Moses stretched forth his hand toward heaven; and there was a thick darkness in all the land of Egypt three days: They saw not one another, neither rose any from his place for three days…”

This is the kind of darkness that was over the earth for three hours when Christ was made sin and judged by the Father. It was not a normal darkness, but a fearful “darkness which may be felt,” a darkness in which people could not see one another.

And the ninth plague in Egypt, a 3 day period of darkness, was followed by the final plague of death, death of the firstborn or the death of the Passover lamb as the substitute. Similarly, at the Cross, a 3-hour period of pitch-black darkness was followed by death, the death of the Substitute, the true Passover Lamb.

1 John 1:5 tells us that “God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.” In His judgment of Christ, the Sin-Bearer, the Father, who “is light” turned away from Him and forsook Him, and this resulted in darkness. And the void remaining from God forsaking and withdrawing from the Son was a powerful, thick darkness which could be felt.

This reminds us of the darkness that the lost and unbelieving will experience in hell for eternity as they separated from God’s presence and are judged for their sins.

Jude describes it as “to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever.” And our Lord spoke of the unbelieving being “cast out into outer darkness” (Matt. 8:12).

Darkness accompanies God’s judgment of sin. And the darkness at Calvary was a visible sign of the judgment that was being poured out on God’s Son when took our sins on Himself and was made a curse for us.

And Matthew Henry made an interesting point when he wrote, “An extraordinary light [from the star] gave intelligence of the birth of Christ, and therefore it was proper that an extraordinary darkness should notify His death, for He is the Light of the world.”

This darkness stopped the mouths of the mocking blasphemers around the cross, as for the first three hours during the daylight, they had been deriding and ridiculing the Lord. But when that darkness hit, there was silence around the cross for those 3 hours.

And our Lord was also silent during these 180 minutes, whose soul was in agony as He faced the full measure of the fire of the Father’s judgment against the sin of man.

As Nahum 1:6 states, “Who can stand before his indignation? and who can abide in the fierceness of his anger? his fury is poured out like fire…” This question received its answer in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. He alone could “stand.” At the Cross, Christ faced the indignation, fierceness, and fury of God’s judgment against our sins.

And one commentator put it well, “Moved by His perfect justice, God’s infinite wrath released an eternity of punishment on the incarnate Son who, as an infinite and eternal person, absorbed the tortures of hell in a finite span of time.”

At the Cross, you see limitless love, unbending and perfect justice, and omnipotent power all combine to make possible the salvation of those who believe.

Matthew 27:46: “And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

On the high day of the Day of Atonement in Israel’s past, two goats were brought before the high priest. One goat was killed and offered as a sin offering.

As for the other goat, in a somber ceremony, the high priest would place his hands on the goat’s head and confess the people’s sins. The innocent animal would receive the sins of all the Israelites.

Then Leviticus 16:21-22 instructed that they were to “send him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness: And the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited: and he shall let go the goat in the wilderness.”

That goat was carried to the edge of the wilderness and released, banished, forsaken, and abandoned. It was all alone in “a land not inhabited.”

The fulfillment of this picture was Christ at the Cross. He was in that solitary place, all alone when He cried out, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”

Both of these two goats picture the cross, as Christ was offered as a sin offering, and by imputation, He took all our sins on Himself, but as a result He was abandoned by the Father, and all alone.

For three hours it had been dark. At noon it became pitch-black dark. At 12:30, it was dark. 1:15—still dark. 2:05—still dark. 2:40—still dark.

But then out of the depths of the darkness, at “about the ninth hour,” or 3:00 in the afternoon, came the anguished voice of the Son of God: “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

This cry of Christ gives the meaning of the darkness, just as the darkness gives meaning to His words.

The words, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani” are Aramaic in origin, the common language of the day. Thus, this eternally-important question is preserved for us in the original language in which it was spoken by the Lord.

And these words mean “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me,” were a direct quote from Psalm 22:1 and was a prophetic fulfillment of them.

Psalm 22 is a Messianic psalm written by David which offers a vivid account of the Cross and depicts the suffering of the Messiah, 1000 years before it happened.

This is the only time that Christ asked a question from the cross.

And there was intensity, fervency, and emotion behind this question from our Lord, as verse 46 says that He “cried” these words, “with a loud voice.”

As Christ was bearing the weight of the sin of the world, He experienced a separation from God for the only time in all of eternity. And you can see the separation Christ was experiencing by Him crying out, “My God, My God.”

In the first and last statements of the Cross, Christ addressed God as “Father,” but not in this statement. And this is the only time in the gospels where Christ addressed God without calling Him “Father.”

And the repeated name, “My God, My God,” expressed the Son’s profound longing for the Father and His comfort, mingled with the agony and pain of His separation from Him.

One author and pastor said, “If after a service some Sunday morning one of the members of my church comes to me and says, ‘I never want to see you or talk to you again,’ I will feel pretty bad.

“But if my wife or my lifelong best friend came up to me and said, ‘I never want to see you or talk to you again,’ I would be devastated. The longer the love, the deeper the love, the greater the torment of its loss.”

And with the forsakenness experienced by Christ on the Cross, the relational loss was between the Father and the Son, who loved each other within the Godhead from all eternity (John 1:1; 17:5). Thus the torment of that loss was infinitely great.

The Lord gradually moved into greater loneliness during His last hours leading to His death. He went with the twelve into the upper room. Judas then left, leaving eleven with Him. The eleven went with the Lord to the Garden of Gethsemane. Three entered the garden with Him, but then they went to sleep.

After the disciples scattered when the Lord was arrested, two followed Him, Peter and John, from a distance and went to the courtyard of Caiphas’s house where the Lord was tried. Here Peter denied Him, and then he went out and wept, leaving one, John.

Men forsook Him, one by one, but the Father had been always with Him.

During His earthly ministry, the Lord had said, “And He that sent Me is with Me: the Father hath not left Me alone; for I do always those things that please Him” (John 8:29).

But now, during the 3 hours of darkness, even the Father had turned away and left Him alone. And Christ felt and experienced the awful, terrifying forsakenness by God that we deserved for our sins.

Christ was forsaken of the Father that we might not be forsaken by Him in hell, that we might be delivered from this dreadful torment.

Author Max Lucado wrote this of the abandonment of the Son on the Cross as He bore our sin: “The undiluted wrath of a sin-hating Father falls upon His sin-filled Son. The fire envelops Him. The shadows hide Him. The Son looks for his Father, but the Father cannot be seen. ‘My God, my God…why?’

“It was the most gut-wrenching cry of loneliness in history, and it came not from a prisoner or a widow or a patient. It came from a hill, from a cross, from a Messiah.

“‘My God, my God,’ He cried, ‘why did you abandon me!’ Never have words carried such hurt. Never has one being been so lonely. The despair is darker than the sky.”

These words were the cry of the Son of God who was now experiencing something He had never known in all of eternity, separation from and forsakenness by God the Father.

This was more than just that Christ felt forsaken; He was literally and actually abandoned by the Father. This cry, shouted out to the Heavens, is met with silence, which underscores the truth of His abandonment.

The answer for why the Father forsook the Son is found in Psalm 22. The Lord quoted verse 1 with His question, “Why hast Thou forsaken Me?” And in verse 3 of Psalm 22, we read, “But Thou art holy, O Thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel.”

The Father forsook the Son because His holiness required it. And because God is holy and just, He must punish sin. In Habakkuk 1:12-13, the prophet wrote, “Art thou not from everlasting, O LORD my God, mine Holy One?…Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity.”

There was no way of transferring sin without also transferring its penalty. Both sin and its punishment were transferred to Christ at the Cross.

Thus, when the Father, the Holy One, laid on Christ the iniquity of us all, He poured out His wrath AND forsook the Son of His love. And the pure, Holy One, who cannot look on iniquity HAD to turn away from His sin-bearing Son. God, who is holy, could not look with favor on His Son when He had become sin.

The fact that Christ was forsaken and made this cry from the Cross teaches us that He took all our sins on Himself and paid for them.

And so ultimately, the answer to the Lord’s question “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me” is: For you, for me, for us. Christ was forsaken by God so that we could be forgiven. The judgment that should have fallen on us fell instead on Him.

The word “forsaken” means to abandon, to desert. The Apostle Paul uses the same word of “forsaken,” when he referred to Demas, a fellow worker who had deserted him: “For Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world, and is departed unto Thessalonica” (2 Tim. 4:10).

Demas forsook, abandoned, departed, and left the Apostle Paul. And likewise, the Father turned away, separated, and forsook His Son when He was made sin.

There’s an old gospel song that I have always liked, called “Ten Thousand Angels.” The lyrics refers to how Christ, could have called 10,000 angels to rescue him from the cross.

And the chorus says, “He could have called ten thousand angels, To destroy the world and set Him free. He could have called ten thousand angels, But He died ALONE, for you and me.” And that is true. He did die alone for you and me.

Like with the darkness, again we see another aspect of hell’s torments that the Lord endured at the Cross, which includes being forsaken by the Father.

Because if the Father turned His face away from His beloved Son when He became sin, He will certainly turn away from every person who dies in their sins.

And like with Christ, God’s wrath will be poured out against them, and the comfort of His presence, love, and compassion will be utterly absent.

There are many terrible, awful things that will torment those in hell, such as the fire and flames, having no rest, being in utter darkness, memories, and the raging thirst.

But the worst thing about hell will be that it is the one place where people will be forever forsaken by God, separated from His presence, being in a place where God’s goodness and comfort are not present.

That brings up a question: “Did Christ Suffer in Hell?” The simple answer to this question is no. A common teaching that you can run into is that after His crucifixion and death, the Lord’s body was placed in a tomb, and His spirit went to hell.

There He suffered all the torments of hell that we would have suffered. But Satan, death, and hell could not hold Him. Acts 2:24-27 is used to support this position:

“Whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death: because it was not possible that He should be holden of it. For David speaketh concerning Him…Therefore did My heart rejoice, and My tongue was glad…Because Thou wilt not leave My soul in hell, neither wilt Thou suffer Thine Holy One to see corruption.”

It is taught that because Christ was not Himself deserving of punishment, the Lord was resurrected from hell and the grave by the power of God. Some will even go so far as to say that you have to believe that Christ suffered in hell to be saved.

But this is a dangerous doctrine and is actually an attack against the Cross of Christ. The word “hell” in Acts 2:27 is translated from the Greek word hades. Hades is in the center of the earth. At the time of Christ’s death, it had two compartments: Abraham’s bosom (or paradise) and torment (Luke 16:22-23).

Christ FULLY faced the judgment of God against our sins upon His Cross during the three hours of worldwide darkness. As He did, Christ experienced the realities of hell AT THE CROSS: being separated from and forsaken by the Father, darkness, torment, pain, thirst, and the fire of God’s wrath against sin.

Christ was our blessed Substitute at the Cross; He paid sin’s penalty for us and took God’s wrath in our place. When Christ cried out, “It is finished” (John 19:30), He meant that the payment for sin was complete and paid in full. To say that Christ also needed to suffer the penalty for sin in hell for three days and three nights is to teach otherwise.

For three days and three nights our Lord was in the center of the earth (Matt. 12:40). We learn where His soul went after He died when He told the believing thief on the cross beside Him, “Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with Me in paradise” (Luke 23:43). Christ did not go to hell when He died. He did not suffer in torment in hades.

His spirit descended into the paradise section of hades where the spirit of the penitent thief went also. 3 days later, He rose again from the dead, triumphant over sin and death!

The sun had just risen on a hot August day in 1944 in the small village of Plelo, in German-occupied France. A 15-year-old boy did not know why he and the other citizens of Plelo had been lined up before a firing squad in the middle of the town square.

Perhaps they were being punished for harboring a unit of French underground freedom fighters. Perhaps they were merely to satisfy the blood lust of the German commanding officer who, the evening before, had routed a small group of French scouts.

All the boy knew was that he was about to die. As he stood before the firing squad, he remembered the carefree days of his early childhood, before the war, spent roaming the green of the French countryside. He thought about all he would miss by never growing up.

Most of all he was terrified of dying. And he hoped no one could hear the whimperings coming from deep in his throat every time he exhaled.

Suddenly, the boy heard the sound of exploding mortar shells beyond the limits of his little village. Quickly rolling tanks could also be heard.

The Germans were forced to abandon the firing squad and face a small unit of U.S. tanks with twenty GI’s led by Bob Hamsley, a corporal in Patton’s Third Army.

A French freedom fighter captain had asked Hamsley for help. After three hours, fifty Nazis were dead, and the other fifty were taken prisoner.

In 1990, the town of Plelo honored Bob Hamsley on the very spot where dozens of the town’s citizens would have died if not for him.

The man who initiated the search for Hamsley and the ceremony honoring him was the former mayor of Plelo, that same 15-year-old boy. He had determined to find the man who saved his life and honor him. He did so, because it’s hard to forget your savior.

And that’s how we feel about our Savior, who has rescued us from eternal death by His all-sufficient sacrifice. We can never forget Him, His love and grace, or His great sacrifice in saving us from our sins so that we might live eternally.