Saturday, August 24, 2024

PT-1 "Supernatural Darkness" (Matt. 27:45)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/24/2024 8:38 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                               Focus:  PT-1 “Supernatural Darkness”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                    Reference:  Matthew 27:45

 

            Message of the verse:  45 Now from the sixth hour darkness fell upon all the land until the ninth hour.”

 

            Let us begin this section, which will take us a number of days to finish, with what happened when the Lord Jesus Christ was born by looking at Luke 2:9 “And an angel of the Lord suddenly stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them; and they were terribly frightened.”  So we can see that when Jesus was born that according to the highlighted part of Luke 2:9 that “the glory of the Lord shone around them.”  The point was that even though it was night that God caused it to be light through the glory of the Lord.  John spoke of Jesus as “the light of men” (John 1:4, 9).  “Jesus spoke of Himself as “the light of the world” (John 8:12; compare 12:35-36), “35 So Jesus said to them, "For a little while longer the Light is among you. Walk while you have the Light, so that darkness will not overtake you; he who walks in the darkness does not know where he goes. 36 “While you have the Light, believe in the Light, so that you may become sons of Light." These things Jesus spoke, and He went away and hid Himself from them.”  In my evening devotions I am looking at the letter of 1 John and have spent a long time going over a sermon by John MacArthur on 1 John 1:5 “This is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.”  If you have not looked at these SD’s from 1 John 1:5 take some time to look over them as there are some very interesting commentaries on the first highlighted part of this verse.

 

            Now as we look at our verse for today we find that the very first miraculous sign that accompanied Jesus’ death was certainly not glorious light bud dread darkness.  From the sixth hour, which was noon, when the sun is at its zenith there came supernatural “darkness fell upon all the land until the ninth hour.”  So from noon until three in the afternoon during the crucifixion of Jesus Christ there was this supernatural darkness.  Now we know that Jesus first was put on the cross at nine o’clock in the morning as seen in Mark 15:25 “It was the third hour when they crucified Him.”  When the darkness began Jesus had been on the cross of t here hours.  Now we will see what it was that the darkness did not happened until noon as we go through this section of Matthew, for there was an appointed time when Jesus had to die, which was the time when the Passover Lamb was sacrificed, which took place at three o’clock in the afternoon.

 

            MacArthur writes “During those first three hours, the silence was broken by Jesus only three times.  The first was by saying, ‘Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing’ (Luke 23:34), and a short while later He said to the penitent thief beside Him, ‘Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise’ (23:43).  Shortly after that He said to His mother, ‘Woman, behold, your son!’ and to John, ‘Behold your mother!’ (John 19:26-27).”

 

            Now it was at the beginning of the second three hours that the great darkness fell upon all the land.  MacArthur adds that “The Greek ge (land) can be translated earth, indicating the entire world.  It is therefore not possible from the text to determine how widespread the darkness was.  God was equally able, of course, to make the darkness local or universal.  Shortly before the Exodus, He caused a great darkness to cover the land of Egypt (Ex. 10:14-15), and some forty years later He cause the sun to ‘stand still,’ probably by temporarily stopping the rotation of the earth (Josh. 10:12-13; cf. 2 Kings 20:9-11).”  I can also think about one of the Plagues God put on Egypt that even though there was darkness over Egypt that there was light over Goshen when the people of Israel lived.  One of the plagues in the book of Revelation is going to be a thick darkness over the land.  Re 16:10 “Then the fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast, and his kingdom became darkened; and they gnawed their tongues because of pain.”

 

            I will now quote one more, very interesting paragraph, from MacArthur’s commentary.  “Several interesting reports in extrabiblical literature suggest that the darkness at Jesus’ crucifixion was worldwide.  The early church Father Origen (Against Celsus, 2:33) reported a statement by a Roman historian who mentioned such a darkness.  Another church Father, Tertullian, who wrote to some pagan acquaintances about an unusual darkness on that day, ‘which wonder is related in your own annals and preserved in your own archives to this day.’  There was also a supposed report from Pilate to Emperor Tiberius that assumed the emperor’s knowledge of a certain widespread darkness, even mentioning that this was from twelve to three in the afternoon.”

 

            Lord willing we will begin to look more at this darkness from Luke’s gospel as we begin the next SD on this verse.

 

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