. . . And Then, What Happened?, Part 1

What makes the passion week of Jesus so significant today from Chuck Swindoll. You realize you do not need someone else to represent you when you go before the board. You need a go-between other than Jesus himself. We go to God through Christ because we now have that kind of relationship. Thanks to the video being, it might seem out of step study in Matthew features the crucifixion of Jesus during the season when were wrapping up to Christmas, but in reality, the timing is perfect. You see, well, Christmas represents the historic moment when Jesus broke onto the world stage is mission even as a baby was pointing to the cross today on Insight for living. Chuck Swindoll teaches from a passage in Matthew that reinforces this truth as we receive a firsthand account of the events that immediately follow after Jesus final brown truck titled today's message and then what happened.

Having these 84 times now through the book of Matthew. I really come true fall in love with Jesus all over again. I come to appreciate new dimensions of his life. I've come to admire his responses which were which are always so filled with restraint, for he being God could have at any moment.

Simply wiped out those who stood against him or spoke against him, but he didn't always treating them with courtesy and kindness and mercy. We learned so much from that. But today for the first time we read of him after he has died his body as limp and lifeless. And you wonder what, there could be from God's word that could instruct us around the did remains of Jesus we will be raised and we all want to race to that resurrection morning I more than anyone, but we will do that today will linger at deaths scene will watches he's being involved as they did in those days and this is placed in the tomb.

The tomb was sealed with a stone, and those who love him walked away many thinking they would never see him again. Matthew captures the scene in the last verses of chapter 27 beginning at verse 50 where Jesus breathed his last. By the way, all four of the gospel writers clearly declare he died for. If you haven't idea you have no resurrection from the dead. Many a skeptic denies that he even died, but that he fainted dead or he's wounded into an unconscious state and then revived, but he died and then we will see what follows in these verses will be looking at verses 50 through 66. I'll be reading from the new living translation.

As you find your place to Matthew 2750.

Then Jesus shouted again and he released his spirit at that moment the curtain in the sanctuary of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.

The earth shook rocks split apart and to open the bodies of many godly men and women who had died were raised from the dead, they left the cemetery after Jesus resurrection went into the holy city of Jerusalem and appeared to many people. The Roman officer and the other soldiers at the crucifixion were terrified by the earthquake and all that had happened. They said this man truly was the son of God. Verse 57 as evening approached Joseph a rich man from Arimathea who had become a follower of Jesus went to Pilate and asked for Jesus body and Pilate issued an order to release it to them. Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a long sheet of clean linen cloth. He placed it in his own new tomb which had been carved out of the rock that he rolled a great stone across the entrance and left both Mary Magdalena and the other Mary were sitting across from the tomb and watching the next day on the seventh leading priests and Pharisees went to see Pilate.

They told him Sir, we remember what that deceiver once said while he was still alive after three days I will rise from the dead soul. We request that you seal the tomb until the third day. This will prevent his disciples from coming and stealing his body and then telling everyone he was raised from the dead wife that happens will be worse off than we were at first, Pilate replied, take guards and security the best you can, so they seal the tomb and posted guards to protect your listening to Insight for living to study the book of Matthew Chuck Swindoll. Be sure to download his searching the Scriptures by going to Insight world.org/studies another message from Chuck titled and then what happened grade events have a way of eclipsing those things that follow we remember the events of course but something about the day after or the days after that event. Sort of fades into oblivion. For example, you remember exactly where you were on 911 2001. You could even remember where you were standing what you thought when you first heard of the terrorists attacking America how you felt but is still food you could recall that same time the next day where you were and where you stood and what you felt it was 912, 911 was passed enough to remember. November 22, 1963, you'll never forget where you were when Pres. John F. Kennedy was assassinated in the city of Dallas. You remember where you were.

You remember the time of 1230 in the afternoon you you can recall the feelings you had, but you cannot remember. November 23, 1963 and where you were at that time. The event is so significant that the day after fades and's insignificant, married couples can always tell you about their wedding day, and often the blood, the honeymoon that is such a vital part of anticipation, but most of us are hard-pressed to remember the week after were back from our honeymoon. When everything is. It will not everything is over, but a lot of everything is over and that your marriage as it is, is it's not like it had been on that great wedding day and and and honeymoon milestone birthdays are like that you reach a certain level in your life and and someone loves you enough to have a big birthday party and and you press reluctantly given to it or you're happy to do so and we all get together we celebrate that day, but you can't for the life of you remember what happened the day after that significant birthday or the anniversary or for that matter, the day after you graduated. You wore the capping down.

We all gathered applauded your academic achievements, but following that, it sort of drops in the shadows and shades of insignificance in our journey through Matthew's gospel.

We have looked deeply into what we call the passion of Christ begins in the arrest of the garden of Gethsemane and ends at the cross from Gethsemane to Golgotha, the passion of Christ already endured all that he suffered things that were said that were untrue decisions that were made that were unfair, and ultimately when Braden failed him to across and stood there across the ground and there he hung in there. He died. He was so significant that you wonder what could follow that I would ever need to remember. You may even recall his final word recorded by John. He records it in the original to tell us the is finished any reasons last. It sounds like it's all over me visits. The mission was accomplished. The purpose of my coming has been realized. It is, but there is so much more.

Of course his body is not lifeless he is.

If you will, a corpse hanging on the cross beam when taken down his body is limp and lifeless.

But something happens that significant even before that moment when out of compassion.

Joseph and another friend Nicodemus with great compassion took him off the cross, pull the nails took it to a private place to embolden. But if you read the text.

As I read today.

Matthew 27 verse 50. Like the other three Gospels tells us he died as it reads here he released his spirit. Other gospel writers say he breathes his last, he gave up his spirit.

At that moment. This version reads something very significant occurred not at the place of death, but her life was going on.

Priests were engaged in there in the rituals people were involved in worship. But something happened in that holiest of holies that had never happened before and would never happen again. A supernatural phenomenon occurred and we read of it at that moment the curtain in the sanctuary of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. This is a just city curtain and this is just any sanctuary.

This is the holiest place on planet Earth so holy that singers are kept away from it at all times the price, a kind of glory of God shown down onto the mercy seat and get this once a year. The priest with great care would enter briefly. Sprinkle blood on that altar back away and leave as he would represent through the blood shedding their report out there the sins of the people and move away back outside of the curtain because the curtain kept people from coming in. No warning to it was quite a fatal quite a piece of tapestry, Josephus reports in his work that was predominately blue in color and ornately decorated. He remembers that it was thick, heavy, handwoven tapestry.

Not only is it miraculous that it is torn but it is torn top to bottom. Hazy Robertson find that the scholar from Louisville teaching at Southern seminary writes in his fine work word pictures of the New Testament.

This veil was the most elaborately woven fabric of 72 twisted plants of 24 threads each meeting in each.

Braden, the veil was 60 feet long, 30 feet wide 9 to 10 inches thick requiring 300 priests to manipulated when it needed to be moved. Listen to that and is tapestry. We have woven rugs in our home. Handwoven tapestries if you will, on the floor and not one of them is an inch-thick less than that impossible for any one of them to be toward them as they are and as carefully as they have been made by hand. This could only be have been done by God. It was an announcement from the Lord saying no longer is there a barrier between the center and the holy God. You are now free to come through the opening day of porn video right into the presence of God.

As we read in Hebrews 4 let us therefore draw near with confidence, many Bibles read with boldness into the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. How marvelous is that we don't come carefully. We don't come reluctantly. We don't come not only what might happen we come boldly.

We if you will walk right into God's presence and we represent our own needs before him as believer priests, you realize you do not need someone else to represent you when you go before the Lord, you should not need a priest you do not need a go-between other than Jesus himself. We go to God through Christ and we go instantly and boldly and frequently because we now have that kind of open relationship. Thanks to the video being toward Lewis Sperry chafer, who founded Dallas seminary back in 1924 before he was a theologian was a musician and often would blend the two gifts in his writings, he heard the words of the old him nearer my God to the and the trouble him because it sounded like as you sing the words that we are simply near God, or we have reason to think coming near to God might be a risky thing that he rewrote the line there were still never nearer I cannot be for the person of his son. I am as near as he I love those words not only because they are beautiful to contemplate, but because of the truth.

They represent how close is a son to a father, a better illustration how close is Jesus the son of God to God the father but could not be closer or we could not be for in the person of his son as we are when we come to Jesus as Savior we always dear is the son so they access the sun has is the access we had a marvelous right after the death of Jesus the Lord saw to it that the veil be toward saying from this moment all you have access to me, no longer needing to go through the priest, the high priest or whatever priest no further. Furthermore, there was an earthquake. The earth shook, so much so that rocks split apart when you remember also that it the same day there was a darkness that inch that shrouded the earth not only clips were never told that the son was in the clips know it wasn't unexpected was in. It was a supernatural phenomenon.

The atmospheric condition of earth was changed by the one who created atmospheres and the earth was shrouded in darkness so remember the things that Matthew records from not from neutral through the day.

He records from a seed that was in darkness, so in the darkness. The bail is split in the darkness and earthquake hits now is is I say that I have to pause because I realize I'm talking to many of you who have never been through and earthquake so you you just think you know what it would be like you don't have a clue if you live for a few years in the state of California or Oregon or Washington brats Alaska along the fault line or Nevada where those quakes occur much more frequently they do on occasion here at the kind of baby quakes here.

There are mild but there are there are five and six sometime seven on the Richter scale.

On occasion you may even read a one up to eight of never been in one at eight or even seven but I've been in 16 and I finally was able to overcome stuttering as a result, it it it leaves you changed to see all your life you have relied on earth to stay under you, you walked on it you could count on. The next step being at the same level as this former step, but in an earthquake. All of the changes I take it this was a massive earthquake. If rocks were splitting on this is a time when there is something seismic is happening. Think of being the priest to his going through his ritual and there the temple or at the temple and think of the worshipers who were there and then, out of a an outside area, which is dark and it's midday or a little later in the dealing with that. On top of all of it. There comes an earthquake and the veil of the temple splits from top to bottom.

It is something you will never, no matter their scale earthquakes are on any fine and what you been through one brings a whole new sympathy for this unsettling moment of the cross. Well, it's apparent Chuck Swindoll has much more to say about this passage will invite you even urge you to keep listening to Insight for living were intent on absorbing the meticulous details Matthew provided and to explore a variety of resources from our study in the book of Matthew, please visit us online head Insight world.org.

Chuck began this brand-new teaching series in January of this year and we are reaching the culmination of the study. As such, we encourage you to request your copy of the commentary Chuck Swindoll wrote to complement his sermons. It's called Swindoll's living insights on Matthew and it comes in two volumes. Many commentaries are scholarly but hard to comprehend what Chuck wrote this one in a user-friendly style and is woven with opportunities for personal application. So to purchase your copy of Swindoll's living insights on Matthew go to Insight.org/offer or call us if you're listening in the US dial 1-800-772-8888 you know every day we hear from listeners all over the world who express their gratitude for your generosity and the Unfiltered Way, Chuck delivers the truth that some of the comment that said Chuck thank you for presenting the unpasteurized word of God. They were, you can be sure Insight for living will never homogenize water down mass in many respects Ruth thank you note belongs to all those who step forward with voluntary donations when you give to this nonprofit ministry.

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