The Hour of Darkness
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The Gospel of Luke answers two basic questions: Who is this Jesus, and what does it mean to follow him, to be a disciple?

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Tonight's scripture is from Luke chapter 22 verses 39 through 64. Jesus went out as usual to the Mount of Olives and his disciples followed him. On reaching the place he said to them, pray that you will not fall into temptation. He withdrew about a stone's throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed, Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me, yet not my will, but yours be done.

An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him, and being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground. When he rose from prayer and went back to the disciples, he found them asleep, exhausted from sorrow. "'Why are you sleeping?' he asked them. "'Get up and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.'" While he was still speaking, a crowd came up, and the man who was called Judas, one of the twelve, was leading them."

He approached Jesus to kiss him, but Jesus asked him, Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss? When Jesus' followers saw what was going to happen, they said, Lord, shall we strike with our swords? And one of them struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his right ear. But Jesus answered, No more of this. And he touched the man's ear and healed him. Then Jesus said to the chief priests, the officers of the temple guard, and the elders who had come for him,

Am I leading a rebellion that you have come with swords and clubs? Every day I was with you in the temple courts, and you did not lay a hand on me. But this is your hour, when darkness reigns. Then seizing him, they led him away and took him into the house of the high priest. Peter followed at a distance. But when they had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and had sat down together, Peter sat down with them.

A servant girl saw him seated there in the firelight. She looked closely at him and said, This man was with him. But he denied it. Woman, I don't know him, he said. A little later, someone else saw him and said, You also are one of them. Man, I am not, Peter replied. About an hour later, another asserted, Certainly this fellow was with him, for he is a Galilean.

Peter replied, Man, I don't know what you're talking about. Just as he was speaking, the rooster crowed. The Lord turned and looked straight at Peter. Then Peter remembered the word the Lord had spoken to him. Before the rooster crows today, you will disown me three times. And he went outside and wept bitterly.

The men who were guarding Jesus began mocking and beating him. They blindfolded him and demanded, Prophesy, who hit you? This is the word of God. We've been looking at the life of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke, and tonight we come to the moment which has often been referred to as the night in which he was betrayed. There is a theme to this passage, darkness, night.

Notice right in the middle of verse 53, right in the middle of the passage, Jesus makes a very odd statement. It's even odder than you can tell in the English translation. It says, this is your hour when darkness reigns. Now, actually, what happens there is he's saying, he literally says, this is the hour of the authority of darkness. And actually, it's not a bad translation. He says, this is the moment of

of the dominion of darkness. Now, what that must mean is, though all these incidents take place at night, they're all in the dark, Jesus says the physical darkness is a representation of something deeper. See, there's a darkness that blinds the eyes, and then there's a darkness that blinds the heart and the mind and the soul. It's a spiritual darkness. It's a spiritual condition. And this is the thing Jesus came to deal with. And because he came to deal with it,

there's a solution for it. So the incidents that happen in the dark, the physical dark, are going to show us what this spiritual condition of inner darkness is and what Jesus has come to do about it. So there's three incidents here. The first two will tell us about our condition, and the third one will tell us what he's come to do about it. Now, here's these three incidents. First, the soldiers reject him.

Then the disciples reject him. And then last, we want to see how even his father rejects him. He's completely rejected. He's completely abandoned. First, the soldiers. And when we see the soldiers rejecting him, we see the mockery in the darkness. Now, what do they do? They mock him. And all through this part of Jesus' life, these last hours before he dies, he's continually mocked. Here, he's being mocked over his claims to be a prophet.

Later, when they put the crown of thorns on him, they're mocking him in his claim of being a king. And when he goes out on the cross, when the crowd just mock him and disdain him and jeer at him, and they make fun of virtually, they mock him for almost any claim he made. They say, he saved others, let him save himself. They make fun of his claim to be a savior. They make fun of his claim to be a king. They make fun of his claim to be son of God and so on. Now, what do we learn here?

First, very brief, but at this time of year it's important to say, notice the range of the mockery. Everybody does it. Here you have servants saying,

the temple guards, but also their masters, the Sanhedrin. We see there's other places in the gospel narratives where the leaders mock him, the servants mock him. Here, the Jews are mocking him. Later, the Romans, they're the ones who put the crown of thorns on him. The Romans mock him. The elites mock him. The common people, the crowds mock him. Everybody does it, and it's important because this time of year, it's important to remember anti-Semitic groups are

anti-Semitic thinkers have gone to the passion narratives trying to find something to pin on the Jews, and you can't do it. Not unless you deliberately twist the meaning of the text, because the text is trying to say every possible kind of class, every possible race, everybody was in on the crucifixion of Jesus. So that's the one thing. But the most important thing to notice is the failure of the mockery.

The utter failure, the ironic failure. You see, when they blindfold him, they smack him, and they say, if you're a prophet, tell us who you are. The irony is that as they attack his prophetic powers, they prove his prophetic powers. Because you see, as they do it, they fulfill what he had already predicted. In Luke 18, verse 32, Jesus says...

The Son of Man will be handed over to the Gentiles. They will mock him. They will insult him. They will spit on him. They will flog him and kill him. I mean, the irony is Jesus predicted what they're doing. He predicted that Peter was going to deny him down to the cock crow. So the mockery...

over his prophetic powers actually proves his prophetic powers. Not only that, it proves that he's the fulfillment of the prophets. Because in Isaiah 50, Isaiah predicted the coming of a suffering servant to do redemption. And in one of the prophecies, the suffering servant says, I offered my back to those who beat me. I did not hide my face from the mocking and from the spitting.

So the mockery, ironically, establishes the very thing it's trying to subvert. Why are they mocking him, though? Why are they mocking him? Here's why. You can't be a prophet, they say. See, remember about a month or two ago, we referred to a famous incident in 2 Kings chapter 1 about Elijah. Now, Elijah was a great prophet. And Ahab...

The king of Israel wanted to kill Elijah, so Ahab sends 50 soldiers to arrest him. Fifty soldiers. And they come to a hill, and Elijah's at the top of the hill, and the captain of the soldiers says, "'Man of God, come down.'" And Elijah looks down and says, "'If I am a man of God, fire will come down and destroy you.'" And down comes fire from heaven, and they're all killed. That's a prophet. See, that's a prophet.

Soldiers come to try to take a real man of God? Soldiers come and try to arrest a prophet? They're destroyed. You see, here's what they're doing. They're saying, if you're a prophet, why can I do this to you? Slap! You can't be a prophet. If you were a man of God, God wouldn't let these things happen to you. If you were a man of God, you wouldn't be so weak and vulnerable. God doesn't work through weakness like this. God doesn't work through such vulnerability.

If God was with you, if God was working through you, he wouldn't be letting all these awful things happen to you. You can't be a prophet, but he was. In other words, they looked at the senselessness of Jesus' suffering.

the apparent senselessness of it. They looked at his weakness. They looked at his vulnerability. They looked at everything going wrong, and they said, they mocked. They said, God doesn't work like this. You can't be the Savior. You can't be bringing God salvation. They mocked, and they missed the greatest act of salvation and love and wisdom in the history of the world because it didn't fit into their little categories. Now, let's apply this. What do we learn from this?

There is a natural spiritual blindness. There is a natural darkness that when we look out and we see darkness in the world, when we see tragedies and suffering and evil and things like that, we mock. We say, there mustn't be a God. God wouldn't allow something like this. Or if there is a God, he must be a fool or he must be bad or something like that. We mock. Even though we may see in this case, and this is what's so ironic, they're looking right at God.

Something they say, it just can't be here. God couldn't work like this. God wouldn't allow this kind of evil and suffering in somebody's life if they were really with him. And yet, Jesus was doing exactly what he should be doing. If Jesus had become strong, if he had gotten up on a... What if Jesus had snapped his fingers, down comes fire, all of the guards are destroyed, he gets up on a horse, he rallies the troops, he rides to victory, all he would have saved people from was Rome. But if he wanted to save us from darkness itself...

From sin and death itself. He was doing exactly what he had to do. And God was doing exactly what God had to do. But they couldn't figure it out. Now, I want you to apply this. How are you doing? When you look at the problems in the world, when you look at the problems in your life, do you mock? Do you say, God couldn't be working through this, or maybe there isn't a God, or God couldn't possibly bring anything good out of this? Do you mock? You're only hurting yourself. Listen, illustration.

No matter how dark the clouds are, and clouds can get very dark. I'll never forget, we were in a tornado once, just missed us years ago. I never thought it could get that dark in the middle of the day. I never thought the clouds could be that thick. They were sort of greenish black. I'd never seen anything like it. It was pretty frightening. And yet, no matter how dark the clouds, no matter how great the storm, it doesn't affect the sun and the stars a whit.

It doesn't affect them a bit, not the slightest. If you've ever been in an airplane and you're down on the ground and it's just, you know, it's thundering and lightning and they take off like idiots and they take off. But when they break up through the clouds, you get up to the top, you get up to 30,000 feet and suddenly, where was that horrible storm? Oh, it's down. It looks like it's about an inch off the ground. There's a sort of cloud cover. But you look, there's a whole universe of light and the clouds haven't affected it a bit. Same here.

Same here. No matter how bad things get in your life, no matter how bad things get in the world, it doesn't affect the sun and the stars of the loving purposes of God a whit. They're no more affected than the sun and the stars are somehow affected by the clouds of a storm. Not at all. The point of this is, here's Jesus, and everything is going wrong, and it seems like God couldn't possibly be with a man like this.

that God couldn't possibly be working in his life, and yet greatness and glory comes out of it. And Jesus' life is a vignette, is sort of a mini version of the whole of history. Because if God can take the senselessness and tragedy of Jesus' life and turn it into something cosmically wonderful, the same thing is going to happen at the end of history. At the end of history. Why can't God do that? For all of history, what he did with Jesus.

We can see he did it with Jesus. We can look back and see every single bad thing that happened to Jesus turned into something glorious and great. Wouldn't it not be possible to actually be able to stand back at the end of history and see the same thing? I think that's the promise. In the Brother's Care of Matzov, there's this incredible quote. "I believe that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage."

the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small mind of man. That in the world's finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, God will bring to pass something so precious that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, of all the blood they've shed, and that it will make it not only possible to forgive, but to justify all that has happened with men.

Okay, now when darkness comes into your life, this is the first part of the spiritual condition of our hearts. When things go wrong, you just don't trust God. You mock. I do. Let's not. Let's not be like them. You only hurt yourself. Mockery never works. It always fails. If anything, it only proves the very thing it's trying to undermine. There's an old song that goes like this.

Above the darkness rides the sun and stars forever dwell. So never say the day is done or bid the stars farewell. And God is saying that to you by saying, just because you don't see me working doesn't mean I'm not. Okay, so the soldiers rejecting Christ, the mockery shows one aspect to the spiritual darkness in our hearts that has to change. If you don't change that, you're not going to survive. You're not going to survive. The mocking only hurts you.

The spite, the disdain, the jeering only hardens you. Second thing we see is not just the soldiers rejecting Christ, but we see his disciples with a kiss. The kiss that isn't really a kiss. Famous place. It says, then Judas, one of the 12, was leading them. He approached Jesus to kiss him. But Jesus asked him, Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss? Okay, now let's...

analyze this for a second. What did the kiss of Judas mean? First of all, it was an act of independence. And that may not be obvious to you, but let me put it in context. A Jewish scholar, Moses Aberbach, who wrote a commentary on the New Testament, or at least part of the New Testament, though he's a Jewish scholar, says this about the incident. He says, in any group of teacher and disciples, the disciple was never permitted to greet his teacher first.

since this implied equality. When coming up, a disciple would greet the other disciples first and the teacher only last, showing deference in the appropriate cultural way. Judas' sign, therefore, was not just a signal to the mob, but it was a deliberate insult. It was an act of independence. It was Judas saying to Jesus, I'm as good as you. But it was not only an act of independence. Secondly, it was a betrayal of intimacy. It is infinitely worse to

to be attacked not by an enemy not by a stranger but by a friend you know in psalm 55 there's these words it says it's not an enemy who did this this is psalm 55 then i could bear it but it was my companion my friend his speech was smooth as butter but war was in his heart and

And there's no better way to make this point. See, the point is, the closer, the more someone has cared for you, the more someone has done for you, the more someone has loved you, the greater you're wrong. The more someone has loved you, the more someone has cared for you, the greater you're wrong. If you wrong them, if you undermine them, if you let them down, if you lie, if you cheat, the closer you are, the deeper your guilt and the deeper his or her hurt.

So a perfect example is if after this service, somebody here who I don't even know, let's just say one of you who I don't even know, you come up to me and you say, I hated this. I'm leaving and I'm never coming back. I'd feel bad. Not real long time, but I'd feel bad. You know, this is New York. Okay.

But if after the service, one of you who I know very, very well and maybe been in the church for years and years and have worked side by side and all that, somebody I knew pretty well, one of you came up after the service and said, I hated this. I'm leaving and I'm never coming back. That would go a lot deeper. That'd be a lot harder, a lot harder. But if after the service, my wife came up to me and said, I hate this. I'm leaving and I'm never coming back. See, that goes infinitely beyond that.

Now, what's the purpose of this? A kiss, which is not a kiss, is the picture Luke gives us of sin. Modern people freak out over the whole idea of sin. They don't like the name sin, the word sin. And I can understand that because over the years, people have taken the word sinner and have abused people with it. You slap the person with a category of sinner, and then that gives you a

basically in many forms of human discourse. It gives me a warrant to bash the person. It gives me a warrant to oppress the person, to marginalize the person. But that's not in any way the biblical understanding of sin at all. If you would like a biblical definition of sin that probably will resonate with people today, here it is. Imagine a single woman adopts a little boy to be her son.

And so she raises him, and of course that entails an infinite number, an infinite number of sacrifices, an incredible number of sacrifices. Sacrifices of time, sacrifices of money, sacrifices of goals, sacrifices of life goals. But she doesn't mind at all. Doesn't mind a bit because she loves him so much. She doesn't regret a bit of it. But now imagine that he goes off to college, and of course she sweated blood to get him there.

And right in the middle of college, without asking her, without telling her, without giving her any warning at all, he drops out. He just drops out. And not only that, he draws all the money that she's ever put in the bank for him and buys cars and clothes and travels around and parties. And she doesn't even hear from him for four or five months. And then one day, he shows up at the door. And he walks in, and he gives her a little kiss.

And he says, Mom, you're probably mad at me. You're probably unhappy. But, you know, this is kind of the way I am. You know how I am. And, you know, I'm in a little bit of trouble. I really need some money. So how about some? What's she going to say? She's going to say, I love you, but we have a problem in our relationship. You're not loving me. You're using me. That kiss is not a kiss.

You're not loving me. You're using me. And there's a problem we've got now. You're going to have to deal with this problem. You can't just walk in. You can't just come back in like this. There's a problem. There's a gap. There's a barrier. It's going to be dealt with. And of course, he's going to say, why are you so cranky? And she's going to say, cranky? He's going to say, you're out of touch with reality, young man, because you don't know how relationships work.

If you think I'm being cranky, if you think there's nothing you have to do, if you think you can just kiss me and keep on going with this relationship, you don't understand how relationships work. And unless you figure that out, the rest of your life is going to be an unmitigated disaster. And of course, she's right. What if there's a God? Now, if there's not a God, you know, our lives are all meaningless. It's just an accident. We really weren't made for anything in particular. There's no purpose in life. There's really no meaning in life. But if there is a God, he's given us everything.

If there is a God, he created us. If there is a God, he sustains us, and he keeps us alive every second. But we take all the things he's given us, existence itself, and our health, and our talents, and our abilities, we take everything, we basically operate as independent operators. And every so often, we say, maybe I need to get a little more spiritual, maybe I need to get a little more religious, I need a little peace in my life, and especially when you get in trouble.

Then we could go to church. Maybe we pray. But if God was a force, if God was a Star Wars kind of the force, if he was some kind of impersonal projection out there, that would be one thing. But he's not. The God of the Bible says, let me tell you who I am. Let me reveal to you who I am. Isaiah 49, verse 15, where God says, can a woman forget the baby who nurses at her breast or fail to have compassion on the son of her womb?

Jesus was the most influential man to ever walk the earth, and his story has been told in hundreds of different ways. Can anything more be said about him?

In his book, Jesus the King, Tim Keller journeys through the Gospel of Mark to reveal how the life of Jesus helps us make sense of our lives. Dr. Keller shows us how the story of Jesus is at once cosmic, historical, and personal, calling each of us to look anew at our relationship with God.

Jesus the King is our thank you for your gift to help Gospel in Life share the transforming love of Christ with people all over the world. So request your copy today at gospelinlife.com slash give. That's gospelinlife.com slash give. Now here's Dr. Keller with the remainder of today's teaching. God has the audacity to take a picture of a mother

who experiences the physiologically based overwhelming affection that comes as she looks at the little infant as her milk is coming up and says, you know that kind of love, you know that kind of infallible, overwhelming, physiologically based love, mother love of a little infant? That's nothing compared to my love for you. I made you for relationship with me. I made you

to have you put me in the center of your life, not using me on the periphery to get things and putting other things in the center, to put you in the center of my life. I put you in the center of my heart. My heart is bound up with you so that when you do these things, you're trampling on me. See, what the son did to the mother might have been illegal, probably was illegal what he did, but so what? That's almost an afterthought. It's nothing compared to what he really did wrong.

He didn't so much break the mother's rules, though he did. He broke his mother's heart. And here's what sin is. Sin is not simply breaking the rules of God. It's breaking the heart of God. Sin is not just trampling on the laws of God. It's trampling on the heart of God. And therefore, all sin, all sin, every act of independence is a betrayal of intimacy. Now, you know, because...

And one of the things the narrative shows us is Judas is not that unusual. See, there's a lot of people who say, ah, but Judas betrayed Jesus. That's the worst possible sin. And, of course, if you read Dante's Inferno, you'll know that at the very bottom of the deepest, deepest part of hell, it's actually underneath. When you get to the deepest part of hell in Dante's Inferno, it's actually not hot, it's cold. There's a lake of ice. And at the very, very deepest part of the inferno of hell is sin.

Judas, the wickedest person ever lived, the worst person ever lived, and there he is being devoured by Satan. Is that what the text tells us? I don't think so. Let me tell you what the text tells us. When Jesus says, one of you will betray me. Remember when he says it? He says this at the upper room. He says, one of you will betray me. What do they say? Do all the disciples say, I know exactly who you mean. Judas, we all know he's different. We all went out. We all went out preaching. He was the only one. Nobody got saved.

We all went out healing. He was the only one. Nobody got better. We all sat at the master's feet. He was the only one who argued. You know, we were all trying hard to imitate the master. He's the only grumpy one. He's the only proud one. He's the only angry one. He's the only resentful one. No, they didn't say that. When Jesus says, one of you will betray me, they all said, no.

Who? Is it me? Who could it be? Because Judas was no different at all from you or me or Peter or anybody. A kiss which is not a kiss. Using God instead of centering your life on God. Betraying God's intimacy. Trampling on his heart is garden variety sin. It is sin.

And you don't see it, and I don't see it, and we're blind to it. We're blind to the heinousness of it and the lovelessness of it. And it's a big part of what's wrong with us. So here's the spiritual darkness. Here's the spiritual blindness. Unable to trust God. Unable to trust Him when things are bad, which is really terribly hard. You're only hurting yourself if you can't do that. And unable to even also being blind to the way in which we betray the one who loves us the most.

So what are we going to do? Who's going to lift the darkness? How are we going to heal this? How's this going to be dealt with? How did Jesus deal with it? And the answer is, let's look at the last rejection. The soldiers rejected him. That's the mockery in the dark. The disciples rejected him. That was the kiss in the dark. And now finally we see his father rejects him. We see the agony in the dark. See what it says up here at the top? He went out as usual to Mount of Olives. That's the place he always used to pray.

Now, there's a lot here that's startling. First of all,

The word anguish is the Greek word agonia, agony. It's the only place in the Bible that's used. He was in agony. He was in such agony that there was blood in his sweat. And you know, the book of Mark tells us that Jesus began to be astonished. That's the word. And that is an amazing word. I've never gotten over that. Something shocked Jesus. And by the way, that's what the physicians will tell you.

that it's rare, but it's possible that it's shock that can actually bring blood out of your capillaries and into your sweat. Something happened to him that shocked him. The Son of God was astonished. And he also says in the book of Mark, my soul is sorrowful even unto death, which is a way of saying, I am under such a crushing weight, such a crushing horror right now that I'm not sure I'm going to even make it to the cross. I feel like I'm going to die right here.

Something was beginning to happen to him, and an angel had to show up just to sustain him to get him through it. What was it? See, now many people have really questioned this because it looks like on the surface that Jesus is afraid to die. And it's a little troubling because a lot of other people have handled it a lot better than that. I mean, you have Socrates who said, and I paraphrase, give me the hemlock down the hatch. And he was completely calm.

But it's not just that. More telling than that is that hundreds and thousands, we know, this is just a fact, of Christians who followed Jesus handled death pretty well, singing hymns as they were put to death, you know, joy on their faces. And see, that's the reason why this is different. Jesus cannot simply be afraid of dying. And here's how you know.

If he was afraid of dying, it would have said he was in agony as he went in to pray. And after he was done praying, he would have felt at least a little better because that's what that's what had always happened to him. But if you look carefully, you'll see the agony, the shock, the crush happened after he prayed. It got worse. Why would that be? And William Lane, a great commentator on the Gospels, puts it like this.

He says the dreadful sorrow and anxiety of Jesus was not just shrinking from the prospect of physical suffering and death. It was rather the horror of one who lived wholly for the Father and who came to be with the Father for an interlude before his betrayal, but found hell rather than heaven open before him.

Now, this is the only thing that makes sense of what we see. Why is it that Jesus isn't afraid, and then he prays and he feels better, but rather he goes in to pray and he feels worse? What Bill Lane is saying is he began to experience, he began to get a foretaste, he began to get a whiff of the cup. Now, what's the cup? In the Old Testament, the cup always means God's justice. And just think about this. What is the consequence...

of the son's sin against the mother? The loss of the relationship. What is the consequence of our sin against God? The loss of a relationship. But don't forget, you realize what that means. For the son to lose the relationship with the mother, if he does not patch that up, he's going to have a lousy life. If we don't patch up our relationship with God, we were built for the presence of God. We have to have the presence of God to be human, to love, to think.

to be utterly cut off from the presence of God? Absolutely. His agony is hell. But what Jesus is beginning to experience is way beyond that. Now you say, what do you mean way beyond that? How can anything be... Well, think about this. Remember what I said? If a friend rejects you, that is infinitely less harmful than if a spouse rejects you, as you certainly know. If God rejects me, that's awful.

But if the Father rejects Jesus, we have to realize that the Father and the Son have a relationship of love that's infinitely greater than anything that we know. The greatest marriage in the history of the world compared to the love of the Father and the Son is like a dewdrop compared to the Pacific Ocean. No lover was ever so one with her spouse. No parent ever so one with his child. No soul ever so one with its body.

as the Father and the Son were. And so for the Son to even get on the outskirts of a loss of that love, to even get on the outskirts, even get a whiff of that, meant he began to experience a horror that pushed blood out of his pores, though he was the Son of God. What must it have been like to actually drink the cup if the sight of it, if the smell of it did this to him? That's what's going on in the garden. And so why did he do it? Why did he do it?

God is basically saying, this is what I want you to do. Put it this way. Centuries ago, God put Adam in the garden with a tree. And he said, obey me about the tree. Don't eat it. In other words, God says to Adam, obey and you will live. But he didn't. Centuries later, the second Adam is in the garden. Not Eden, Gethsemane. And there's another tree. This time it's a cross.

And God says, obey me about the tree. But I want you to see the contrast here. The first Adam was told, obey me and you will live. The second Adam was told, obey me and I will crush you to powder. Jesus was told something that God never has said to anybody before and will never say again.

God has never said this before or again, but he said it once. He said, I want you to obey me, and if you obey me, I will utterly abandon you. I will utterly cast you off. I will send you into hell. I will send you into infinite sorrow because our relationship was infinitely greater than a relationship between anybody else. Your sorrow, your pain, your misery will be infinitely greater than someone going to hell.

God says to the first Adam, obey and you will live. And he didn't. God says to the second Adam, obey and I will crush you to power. But he did obey. Why? Why would he do that? To get glory? He had glory before. To get a relationship with the Father? Obviously not. What did he get out of it? Only one thing. Us. You. Forgiven. Loved. A relationship. Don't you see?

When Jesus died, the minute he died, Luke 23, verse 45, it says, darkness was over the whole land for the sun stopped shining. What does that mean? The darkness came into him. He took the darkness. He took the consequences of what we've done. He took the darkness so that we can... He died in the dark, the ultimate dark, so that we could live in the light, so that we could have the light that never goes out. Now...

Do you believe that? To the degree you believe it, to the degree you're melted by it, to that degree, the darkness of your own heart will start to lift. To that degree, you'll be able to start to trust God when things are bad. To that degree, you'll be able to start to put God in the center instead of using him and betraying him. In other words, seeing Jesus take the ultimate darkness for you is the only thing that will start to lift the darkness from you.

But you say, well, how does that actually happen? All right, just a word on this. Here's a very practical example of how this actually happens, and you can see it in Peter. Peter, of course, has been, you know, abandoning Jesus and denying Jesus. But we also see that he follows along just behind. And now he's really at the bottom, and he's denying Jesus, and he's lying. What's the difference between Peter and Judas? Do you know? What's the difference between Peter and Judas? Only one thing.

Only one thing. Peter wept. See, Judas went into the dark by abandoning, by betraying Jesus. And Peter went into the dark by denying Jesus. But Judas never came out because he never wept. See, when Peter began to weep, he began to repent. He began to repent. And when you take failure, we said this last week, when you take failure and you put it into a vat of repentance...

into a vat of relying on the grace of God. When you take failure and you put it into a vat of repentance, it turns it to gold. It turns it into humility. It turns it into compassion. It turns it into self-knowledge. It turns it into understanding of other people. And that's what happened to Peter. He wept. Well, why? Why was he pulled out of the darkness? Why did the darkness lift out of him?

Three things came together. Here's what they are. Number one, he finally got into a situation that revealed to him how bad he was. He got into a situation that finally revealed to him just how weak he really was. You need that, a circumstance, number one. Number two, the second thing, he had a word to remember. You see, it says he remembered the word Jesus said, the cockcrowed and he remembered. In other words, Jesus had given him the gospel. Remember the gospel?

It was last week. He said, Simon, Simon, you're going to deny me, but I have prayed for you, and I'm going to turn you into a leader. That's the gospel. On the one hand, you're more wicked than you ever dared believe. You're going to deny me. On the other hand, you're more loved and valued than you ever dared hope. I'm going to save you anyway. I'm not going to let go of you. I'm going to be your advocate. I'm going to be your high priest. Now, this was the gospel, and Peter had it, but he carried it around with him, and it hadn't really changed him until he got into a situation where

in which he was forced to see his need. And there's one last thing. You have the circumstance, you have to have the gospel, and then it says, when the cock crowed, the Lord turned and looked at him. It's not enough to believe in your head. The Holy Spirit has to give you a sight, a heart sight of Jesus Christ chained for you, beaten for you, bleeding for you.

And when you take the word and you take the spirit and a situation that forces you to rely on him, the darkness starts to lift. The darkness starts to lift. This is what you need. You need an industrial strength love. You need a love. Look, look, here is someone who will never forsake you. You say, well, if I try to be a Christian, what if I fail? Look what his love has already taken. His love for you has already taken hell. Hell. Hell.

Do you think that you're going to do something to knock him off his stride? The father came and said, if they're going to be saved, you're going to have to go to hell. He said, all right. If that didn't stop his commitment to you, do you think some of your flubbing up is going to? Here is someone who will never let you down. This is the only one who will never let you down.

If you have this, if you know this, if this melts your heart, you'll be able to handle anything. You'll be able to handle the darkness. You'll be able to handle other people's betrayals. You'll say, well, God, Jesus was good for me. Even when I let him down, I can forgive these people. You can handle betrayals. You can handle failure. And most of all, you'll have hope. You know why? You know what the hope is? Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning. And that is all sadness, all evil is temporary.

This proves it. Above the darkness rides the sun and stars forever dwell. So never say that day is done or bid the stars farewell. Let's pray.

Father, we ask that you would help us to see that Jesus Christ took the ultimate darkness. And as we see that, and as we have it applied to our heart by this Holy Spirit, as we think more about how the gospel works, as we recognize sometimes circumstances that force us to depend on you, as these things all work themselves out in our lives, our own darkness lifts. We ask that you would

Help that process along. We ask that you would show us what Jesus has done for us in such a way that we would be changed into his likeness. We want to be as faithful as him. He was. We want to be as loving as he was. We want to be as great as he was. And we can be because he was loving and faithful and great for us. And now because of him, we are in your family. So we pray that you would work these things into our lives and help us to apply them by your spirit. In Jesus name we pray.

Amen.

This month's sermons were recorded in 1990, 2003, and 2010. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were preached from 1989 to 2017, while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church. ♪