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Well, good evening, everybody. I feel a very long way away from you behind the table here, but we are all in the same building together. And if you're here for the first time, then a very warm welcome to you. My name is Steve, Steve Nichols. It's great to welcome you here.

You're joining us. So halfway through a series we've started called Christianity explored. As you've heard, we're exploring the christian faith and we've been reading our way through this little red book, the Biography, one of the biographies of Jesus by Mark, who was a friend of one of Jesus followers. And I don't know about you, but I love reading biographies. I love finding out about other people's lives, what they did, what they got up to.

Over the last couple of years, I've been reading a big biography of Winston Churchill. It's three volumes. It's about 3000 pages. If you add it all up. It's taken me a long time.

I do it in short doses, but it's interesting. Most of the biography, most of those 3000 pages is about his life. It's only the last little bit that's about his death. But when you come to the biography of Jesus, whether it's Mark or Matthew or Luke or John, about a third of the biography is all about his death, the events leading up to his death, his death itself, what happened after his death. It all centres, really, around his.

Christians, you know, never get tired of talking about Jesus' death. They sing about it. We've just sung about it. Some Christians wear a cross round their neck. We see crosses on tops of buildings.

This church was built or was added to, so that is the shape of a cross. We're sitting in a big cross with these truncepts on either side of us.

Later this evening, we're going to have a meal that proclaims Jesus' death on the cross. And yet, if we were living in the first century, we wouldn't be talking about it, at least in polite society, because for the Romans, the cross or crucifixion was a terribly shameful way to die. It was reserved for the very worst offenders. No Roman citizen would let the word Cross or crucifixion pass by their lips. And yet christians are, well, we're obsessed with the cross, we're captivated by the cross.

We don't move away from the cross. And tonight we're going to think about why that is. Why the cross? What happened there at the cross? Well, Ash is going to bring our reading to us.

If you've got one of these little gospels. Please turn to page 50 in it. It's mark, chapter 15. We're going to read verses 21 to 39, page 50 in these red books. Ash is going to read it to us.

Ash. Thank you very much.

So, mark 15, verses 33 to 39. The death of Jesus. At noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. And at three in the afternoon, Jesus cried out in a loud voice, eloi, eloi lama sabaktani. Which means, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

When some of those standing near heard this, they said, listen, he's calling Elijah. Someone ran, filled a sponge with wine vinegar, put it on a staff and offered it to Jesus to drink. Now leave him alone. Let's see if Elijah comes to take him down, he said with a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last. The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.

And when the centurion who stood there in front of Jesus saw how he died, he said, surely this man was the son of God.

That's great. Thank you very much, Ash. Please keep it open. If you've got it in your hands there, do keep it open. We're going to look down at some of these verses as we go through.

And tonight we're just going to look at three things from this passage. Three things. And here they are. At the cross we see that God was judging sin. At the cross.

God was judging sin at the cross. Number two, Jesus was abandoned. Jesus was abandoned at the cross. We can be accepted. So God was judging sin.

Jesus was abandoned. We can be accepted. The sun is the brightest thing in the sky. In our sky, it's more than 100 times bigger than the earth. It's 93 million mile away.

You probably know that it takes light eight minutes to reach the earth from the sun. And that light from the sun sustains virtually all life on earth. It governs our weather systems and our climate and so on. And yet mark 15, verse 33 tells us that when Jesus died on the cross from the 6th hour until the 9th hour, that's from midday until 03:00 in the afternoon, when the sun would have been at its brightest, at its highest, between those hours, across the whole land, there was darkness. Darkness.

The earth was plunged into darkness. Now, if you are not a Christian here this evening, what do you make of that darkness at midday?

It wasn't an eclipse. It couldn't have been an eclipse, not if it lasted for 3 hours, because eclipses usually only last about six minutes. And it was also at the time of jewish Passover Jesus died at the Passover. All the records are clear of that. And Passover was at full moon.

You can't have an eclipse when there's an eclipse of the sun when there's a full moon. So something else was going on for those 3 hours of darkness in the middle of the day.

Throughout the Bible, light symbolises God's presence and his blessing. And darkness is a sign of his judgement or of his curse, we might say. We might think of the plague of darkness. If you remember the story of the Israelites coming out of Egypt at the Exodus with Moses, you might think of the plague of darkness that fell on the whole land of Egypt. God was judging.

And here at the cross, something supernatural is going on. God was judging sin. God was judging sin at that one moment in human history. Now again, if you're not a christian believer, I wonder what you make of that. That might just sound very primitive to you.

A God of judgement. Isn't that very old fashioned? Isn't that a bit Old Testament smiting and judging and so on? When we think of anger though, we think of something unpredictable and wild, something uncontainable, don't we? But actually the Bible says that God's anger is not like that.

God's anger, God's wrath at our sin isn't frighteningly unpredictable, uncontainable. It is his settled, controlled, personal hostility to all that is evil, to all that is wrong in his world. And actually, when we think about it, that it's a good thing if we care about justice in this world, and we do, why would we think that the God who created this world and loves this world doesn't care about justice? Of course he cares about wrongdoing. And that's a good thing, isn't it, that that matters to him.

It's a good thing that he doesn't ignore what's wrong in his world. It's a good thing that lying matters to him because he's a God of truth, that slander matters to him, that the deaths of ordinary people caught up in terrorism around the world, that matters to him. And it will be judged. But so do our lives, so does our thought life. What we think about that matters to him.

The way we think about other people, the way we destroy other people in our minds, sometimes without them even knowing it. That matters to him. The way we commit adultery in our hearts by looking lustfully at one another, that matters to him as well. It all matters to him because the God of the Bible is a God of purity and truth and beauty and justice and sin matters to him. And he can't just sweep it under the carpet and pretend it's not there.

That wouldn't be. Just so, as Jesus was dying on the cross, we're told, darkness came over the whole land. It was plunged into darkness because God was judging sin. But the question is, whose sin was he judging? Because at the cross, it seems that the judgement is directed at the Lord Jesus, at Jesus Christ himself.

And that takes us to the second thing we see at the cross. That at the cross God was judging sin. And at the cross Jesus was abandoned.

Crucifixion was an agonising way to die. We get the word excruciating from the latin word crooks or cross. It was excruciating. But the agony of the cross wasn't just physical. In fact, we might say the physical suffering was the least of the suffering that Jesus experienced on the cross, as terrible as it was.

Because for the first time ever, God, the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, was experiencing what it was to be abandoned by his father. Verse 34 tells us, at three in the afternoon, Jesus cried out in a loud voice, eloi, eloi lamak sabakthani. Which means, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

I wonder if you've ever visited an old castle, maybe an english heritage castle. Warwick Castle has one of these. They're called ubliettes. Do you know what an ublite is? This is a language lesson tonight, isn't.

It's from the French, meaning to forget. And anubliet was a particularly unpleasant, vicious dungeon. It was a brutal kind of dungeon. It was a very small chamber with a little opening at the top. And what they would do is they would put somebody down into the ublite and forget about them.

Food might be thrown down now and again just to prolong the person's suffering. But basically they were no longer relevant. They were forgotten, they were of no importance. And Jesus warns us in the scriptures again and again that if we push him away, if we live our lives with him on the edges, we push him to the side and we say to him, I don't want him. I don't want him in my life.

Then there will come a time where he will confirm our choice and say, you didn't want me, you don't have to have me. And forever you'll be apart from me. We will, in an awful way, be forgotten, be irrelevant to him.

Jesus spoke about a place called hell more than anybody else in the Bible. He warns us about it because he doesn't want any of us ever to experience it. But he didn't just warn us. He experienced it for us when he died on the cross being forsaken by his father.

Wonder if you can imagine that this little book is a record of your life. It's very short, but imagine it's a great big book, a record of your life, everything you've said and thought and done. And there's lots in it to celebrate. There's lots of good things.

There are the things that maybe it's a loving home, sacrifices we've made, things we've achieved at school or at work, successes and things, things that we're rightly proud of. But that there's a whole lot of other stuff in this record of our lives that we're not so proud of. Things that actually we would be horrified if anybody else ever found out. Things we're ashamed of. We would hate to be exposed.

But the Bible says that nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give an account. He sees it all, the good and the bad. Nothing is hidden. So suppose this is the record of our life and this is you.

And the ceiling above us is God. The Bible says that between us and God is the record of our debts, and it separates us from him. Your sins have separated you from God. The Bible actually says that in Isaiah 59, verse two, your sins have separated you from your God. Your sins have hidden his face from you so that he will not hear.

But at the cross, the Bible says, the record of our sins was transferred to Jesus. He took our sins, your sins, and my sins on himself. It's as if he said, that is too much for you to bear. That's too much for you to pay for. Let me take that from you.

Let me take responsibility for that for you. And at the cross, he took our sins on himself. The Old Testament prophet Isaiah wrote about it 700 years before it happened. He said, in Isaiah 53, we all, like sheep, have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

So in the middle of the day, the heavens turned black because God was judging our sin. Your sin and my sin in the person of his own son, Jesus Christ.

God was paying himself the price for what separates us from God so that we wouldn't have to be separated. So those are our first two truths. At the cross, God was judging sin. At the cross, Jesus was abandoned. Third at the cross.

We can be accepted if you just got your bible there. Have a look down at verse 37 and 38. Verse 37. At the top of page 51, it says, with a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last. The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.

And this is the bit in the film where the camera cuts from one scene to the next. So it starts at the cross and Jesus cries his last and he dies. And the camera cuts and we're taken inside Jerusalem to the temple. And the curtain in the temple is torn into from top to bottom. And in the temple there was a great thick curtain, 30ft high.

It's said to have been as thick as the span of a man's hand, and it separated two rooms. The most holy place, which represented heaven, where God dwells, and the holy place represented the earth, divided by this great curtain, representing our sin. It was a great no entry barrier. We can't go into the presence of God. Our sin has separated us from him.

But as Jesus dies, the curtain is torn in two from top to bottom. God is saying, the way is open because your sin has been paid for by my son. The way is open for you to come into my presence.

I wonder if you've ever heard that before. Maybe it's the first time. What do you make of that? Jesus has paid for your sin and my sin. The way is open for us to be accepted by God.

We're going to think about how we should respond to this, how we might respond to this in just a moment or two. We're going to look at some of the characters around the cross and what they made of what they saw that day. But before we do that, we're going to sing again. So can I invite the band to come up to the front? We're going to sing my Jesus, my saviour.

Have a seat, everybody.

Thank you very much to our musicians for leading us tonight. So wonderful to sing together. My Jesus, my saviour. Many of us will be able to say that tonight, but there might be some here who can't. Maybe you can't.

Maybe that's a step you can't take and words you can't say just yet. Well, let's just think about the response to some of those around the cross. We've only got three or four minutes left, so let's just think about some of those people gathered around the cross. And if you've got your red mark's gospel, pick it up and let's turn to verse 24 and we'll see the first people there. Verse 24.

Matthew, chapter 15. It's on page 50, on page 50. And here are the soldiers, busy soldiers, busy putting Jesus to death. It says in verse 24, dividing up his clothes. They cast lots to see what each would get.

What did the soldiers make of the cross? Well, it's just an opportunity for them. They're too busy. Just an opportunity to get rich. The only benefit the soldiers get from the cross is Jesus' clothes.

We find elsewhere that they cast lots to see who would get the undergarment, which was just woven in one piece. The most precious and valuable thing of all. It was just an opportunity. They were so busy, they didn't want to miss out on that, but they missed out on what was happening right in front of them. They're doing their job.

And that's a frightening thought when you think about it. They were so busy that they missed out. You can be busy. You can be preoccupied with school, with college, with work, with paying the mortgage, with climbing the ladder. Daily life can be so intense, so busy, it keeps you from noticing what happened at the cross, the most important event in history.

It just gets left behind in the busyness of day to day life. So that's the first group, the soldiers. Here's the second group at the cross. And these are the religious people, the religious leaders, the self righteous, self confident religious people. And they're there in verse 31, the religious leaders.

And they're mocking Jesus, too. He says in verse 31, in the same way the chief priests and the teachers of the law mocked him among themselves. He saved others, they said, but he can't save himself. Let this Christ, this king of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may see and believe. And they're mocking him because they're convinced that they already know the way to God.

They think they don't need Jesus on the cross. They don't understand that what he's doing on the cross, he's doing for them. They think they have no need of it. They think they know the way to God already. And I guess that today there are many people who would say the same.

I don't need Jesus' death on the cross. I mean, I try my hardest. I do my best. I'm not a bad person.

Most people live outwardly respectable lives, don't they? We live in Linfield, for goodness sake. Outwardly respectable. They might even describe themselves as spiritual people. I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual.

I'm a spiritual person. But they won't rely on Jesus' sacrifice on the cross to take away their sin to make them right with God. And it's true, it's hard to do that because the cross says that none of us is good enough, none of us can make our way to God ourselves. We need him to take our sin. None of us good enough, none of us is wise enough, none of us is clever enough, none of us is strong enough to save ourselves.

We need a saviour. We need someone to save us. And for many people, it's their pride that stops them coming to Jesus and saying, thank you for what you did at the cross. For me, I need you. We live in a very self sufficient, independent culture.

Third person at the cross there is the spectator in verse 36. Verse 36, he hears Jesus cry out and he thinks that Jesus is calling to Elijah. Elijah is one of the Old Testament prophets who it was said would help those people in need. So this man, hearing Jesus cry out, misunderstanding what Jesus is saying, gets a sponge, fills it with wine vinegar, puts it on a stick and lifts it up for Jesus to drink. Now leave him alone.

He says, let's see if Elijah comes down and takes him. So this is a man who's just come for the show. He's just come to see what's going on that day outside Jerusalem. And perhaps he wants to see a miracle. But the cross doesn't move him at all.

What's happening right in front of his eyes just leaves him cold. He's totally detached. And I guess there are lots of people like that today as well, aren't there? They've heard about the cross. Maybe they come to church, maybe regularly, maybe they even sometimes read the Bible, but they don't see that Jesus' death and sacrifice was for them.

Is that you? Jesus' death and sacrifice was for you. Have you grasped that yet? Mark gives us these reactions to the cross. The busy soldiers, the religious, self confident religious leaders and the detached observer, the detached bystander.

They all saw the death of Jesus, but they all missed out. It's as if Mark is saying to us, this is how other people responded to the cross. But how about you? What do you make of it? Are we too busy like the soldiers?

Are we self confident like the religious leaders who think they don't need the cross? Or are we completely unmoved, just detached from it? Observers like the bystander? Well, there's one last response, and that is in verse 39, the roman centurion. That's where the reading ended.

The roman centurion. And Chris introduced us to the roman centurion, a couple of weeks ago, this centurion, this roman soldier, must have seen some terrible things in his career as a roman soldier, perhaps had even overseen other crucifixions in Judea. But he had never seen anyone die like this. Verse 39, it says, and when the centurion who stood there in front of Jesus saw how he died, he said, surely this man was the son of God. And that's, I guess that's our final option.

As we look at what happened at the cross, we can recognise that Mark is telling us the truth about Jesus, that he is God's son and that he is dying for our sin. And that, it seems, is what the centurion somehow recognises, what the Lord has revealed it to him. Surely this man was the son of God. So as I end tonight, I want to ask you just a simple question. What's your response to this?

What is your response to the cross? You might want to talk about it a bit more with somebody and Antonia, Ben, or I would be delighted to talk some more. Maybe the person sitting next to you, person you've come with, I'm sure they would love to talk to you about it if they're a follower of Jesus themselves. You may want to read Mark's gospel a little bit more, take it away. If you're here for the first time, take one of these away tonight and do read it over these next few days.

Come back next week and we're going to think about what happened next. Because christians say the Bible says Jesus rose from the dead, and if he did, that changes everything. So come back next week. Let's keep asking those questions. But Mark leaves us with a stark choice and I make no apologies for it.

What are we going to do with our sin?

Will we live with it and die with it and pay for it ourselves?

Or will we allow Jesus to pay for it at the cross for us, so that we no longer have to be separated, we never have to cry, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? But instead, just as the curtain temple was torn open, we can be reconciled and welcomed into God's presence forever. We meet him at the cross.

Well, I'm going to hand over to Ben, I think, who's going to lead the next as part of our service, our communion service benefit. Thank you.