Darkness

When I was about eight years old, some boys on the elementary basketball team played a cruel prank on me. They shoved me in an old, abandoned locker room and held the door closed. That was the longest five minutes of my childhood.

To say that locker room was dark would be an understatement. Positioned under the bleachers of our old high school gymnasium in a dank, makeshift basement, it was pitch black. The darkness swallowed me up. I couldn’t see a thing, but my imagination convinced me of a sinister presence lurking in the shadows.

I kept my composure—for about 30 seconds. But when I heard an older male voice join the chorus of boyish laughter, I lost it. My coach! I’m glad the darkness hid my shame that day. Sobs shook my little body and I straight-up ugly cried. Boyish pranks I can handle. But my coach? That was betrayal. He forsook me in my darkness.

In the Old Testament, darkness meant one thing: judgment. God sent a plague of thick darkness to Egypt for three days to put Pharaoh in his place. Then he slayed the firstborn son of every unbelieving family.

The prophets warned about the “Day of the Lord” when God would visit his people in darkness and judgment: And on that day, declares the Lord God, I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight…I will make it like the mourning for an only son and the end of it like a bitter day (Amos 8).

Describing the crucifixion of Jesus, Mark writes: And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour (Mark 15:33). That was noon on the Hebrew clock. Darkness at midday—for three hours. Sound familiar? Every Jew witnessing the crucifixion would think: God just showed up. Judgment Day has begun. We’re finished.

The clouds of God’s anger had gathered. Who is being punished? Will God judge the High Priest, for his false accusations against Jesus? Maybe Pilate is about to get nuked for ordering an innocent man to be crucified. Will the Roman soldiers perish who led the mockery of King Jesus? The crowds? Herod? Where will God aim his wrath?

Then we read these unsettling words, And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:33–34)

In that darkness, Jesus was forsaken—by his father. He was cursed and abandoned. Swallowed up in God’s wrath. It’s hard to imagine anything more shocking. A father forsaking his son—when his son needed him the most.

I can’t help but think of my coach on the other side of that door, holding me in the darkness. It hurt. I was confused and disappointed. But I got over it. Honestly, I barely knew him. The relationship was weak…obviously.

But had my dad stood on other side of the door, I’d need some serious therapy. The stronger the relationship and deeper the love, the more agonizing when it’s taken. Jesus lost his friends on that day. He lost his dignity. He lost his reputation. He lost the crowds who once hailed him as their hero. He even lost his life. But what hurt the most, and what should mean the most to us is this: Jesus lost God on that day. That’s hell.

You can’t fully appreciate the cross until you come to grips with why Jesus was forsaken. He was bearing sin in our place. He was suffering the curse of God. That means losing God’s love, being damned.

He didn’t scream “My pain! My hands! My feet! My head! I can’t breathe!” Neither did he cry “My beloved disciples! Where are you?” No, this was the agonizing cry of personal separation and loss. “My God! My God!” That’s intimacy. Where are you?

This is Jesus losing his Father. Being forsaken. For us. That’s what our sin deserves—to lose God. But because of Jesus, we get God. All of him. Full sonship. Complete access. What a beautiful word! No more feeling unwelcome, dirty, unacceptable. We are now invited back into God’s presence. And we can enter with boldness.

Mark says at the very moment Jesus died, the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. That curtain existed to make a theological statement: “Stop! Back! No further!” It separated people from God. But suddenly, it’s gone. Torn like the body of Jesus, cutting us a path back into God’s presence.

Now anyone can get to God. So Mark’s final statement is the story of the most unlikely convert: the confession of a Roman Centurion.

He was a hard man. He was a brutal man. He had seen and probably inflicted death many times. Complicit in the suffering of Jesus, he walked in spiritual darkness. But when he stood facing Jesus at the Cross, God shined the light of the Gospel in his heart. So one of the most violent, hardened pagans confessed Jesus as Lord and walked right into the presence of God, a forgiven man.

To understand God, and to understand himself, he had to face Jesus on the Cross—and so do we. John Stott was right. “It is only there, at the foot of the cross, that we shrink to our true size.” Jesus took your darkness so you can walk in His light.

To hear the entire message on Darkness – click here.