THE THREE HOURS OF DARKNESS – Charles Spurgeon
THE THREE HOURS OF DARKNESS
“Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour.” Matthew 27:45.
I. A Miracle Which Amazes Us
From nine till noon, the usual degree of light was present, so that there was time enough for our Lord’s adversaries to behold and insult His sufferings. There could be no mistake about the fact that He was really nailed to the Cross, for He was crucified in broad daylight. We are fully assured that it was Jesus of Nazareth, for both friends and foes were eyewitnesses of His agonies. For three long hours, the Jews sat down and watched Him on the Cross, making jests of His miseries. I feel thankful for those three hours of light, for otherwise, the enemies of our faith would have questioned whether, in very deed, the blessed body of our Master was nailed to the tree and would have started false rumors as many as the bats and owls which haunt the darkness!
Where would have been the witnesses of this solemn scene if the sun had been hidden from morn till night? As three hours of light gave opportunity for inspection and witness-bearing, we see the wisdom which did not allow it to close too soon. Never forget that this miracle of the closing of the eye of day at high noon was performed by our Lord in His weakness. He had walked the sea, raised the dead, and healed the sick in the days of His strength, but now He has come to His lowest—the fever is on Him—He is faint and thirsty. He hangs on the borders of dissolution. Yet He has power to darken the sun at noon! He is still very God of very God—
“Behold, a purple torrent runs
Down from His hands and head!
The crimson tide puts out the sun!
His groans awake the dead!”
If He can do this in His weakness, what is He not able to do in His strength? Fail not to remember that this power was displayed in a sphere in which He did not usually put forth His might. The sphere of Christ is that of goodness and benevolence and, consequently, of light. When He enters the sphere of making darkness and of working judgment, He engages in what He calls His strange work. Wonders of terror are His left-handed deeds. It is but now and then that He causes the sun to go down at noon and darkens the earth in the clear day (Amos 8:9). If our Lord can make darkness at will as He dies, what Glory may we not expect now that He lives to be the Light of the city of God forever? The Lamb is the Light and what a Light! The heavens bear the impress of His dying power and lose their brightness! Shall not the new heavens and the new earth attest the power of the risen Lord? The thick darkness around the dying Christ is the robe of the Omnipotent—He lives again! All power is in His hands and all that power He will put forth to bless His chosen!
What a call must that mid-day midnight have been to the careless sons of men! They knew not that the Son of God was among them nor that He was working out human redemption. The grandest hour in all history seemed likely to pass by unheeded, when, suddenly, night hastened from her chambers and usurped the day! Everyone asked his companion, “What does this darkness mean?” Business stood still. The plow stayed in mid-furrow and the axe paused uplifted. It was the middle of the day, when men are busiest, but they made a general pause. Not only on Calvary, but on every hill and in every valley, the gloom settled down. There was a halt in the caravan of life! None could move unless they groped their way like the blind. The master of the house called for a light at noon and his servant tremblingly obeyed the unusual summons. Other lights were twinkling and Jerusalem was as a city by night, only men were not in their beds! How startled were mankind! Around the great deathbed, an appropriate quiet was secured. I doubt not that a shuddering awe came over the masses of the people and the thoughtful foresaw terrible things.
Those who had stood about the Cross and had dared to insult the majesty of Jesus, were paralyzed with fear. They ceased their ribaldry and, with it, their cruel exultation. They were cowed though not convinced, even the basest of them. While the better sort “smote their breasts and returned,” as many as could do so, no doubt, stumbled to their chambers and endeavored to hide themselves for fear of awful judgments which they feared were near. I do not wonder that there should be traditions of strange things that were said during the hush of that darkness. Those whispers of the past may or may not be true—they have been the subject of learned controversy, but the labor of the dispute was energy ill spent.
Yet we could not have wondered if one did say, as he is reported to have done, “God is suffering, or the world is perishing.” Nor should I drive from my beliefs the poetic legend that an Egyptian pilot passing down the river heard among the reed banks a voice out of the rustling rushes, whispering, “The great Pan is dead.” Truly, the God of Nature was expiring and things less tender than the reeds by the river might well tremble at the sound!
We are told that this darkness was over all the land. And Luke puts it, “over all the earth.” That portion of our globe which was then veiled in natural night was not affected—but to all men awake and at their employment, it was the advertisement of a great and solemn event. It was strange beyond all experience and all men marveled—for when the light should have been brightest—all things were obscured for the space of three hours! There must be great teaching in this darkness, for when we come so near the Cross, which is the center of history, every event is full of meaning. Light will come out of this darkness! I love to feel the solemnity of the three hours of death-shade and to sit down in it and meditate with no companion but the august Sufferer, around whom that darkness lowered.
II. A Veil Which Conceals
I am going to speak of it in four ways, as the Holy Spirit may help me. First, let us bow our spirits in the presence of a miracle which amazes us. Secondly, let us regard this darkness as a veil which conceals. Thirdly, as a symbol which instructs. And, fourthly, as a display of sympathy which forewarns us by the prophecies which it implies.
The Christ is hanging on yonder tree. I see the dreadful Cross. I can see the thieves on either side. I look around and I sorrowfully mark that motley group of citizens from Jerusalem—along with scribes, priests, and strangers from different countries—mingled with Roman soldiers. They turn their eyes on Him and, for the most part, gaze with cruel scorn upon the Holy One who is in the center. In truth it is an awful sight. Mark those dogs of the common sort and those bulls of Bashan of more notable rank who all unite to dishonor the Meek and Lowly One. I must confess I never read the story of the Master’s death, knowing what I do of the pain of crucifixion, without deep anguish—crucifixion was a death worthy to have been invented by devils! The pain which it involved was immeasurable! I will not torture you by describing it. I know dear hearts that cannot read of it without tears and without lying awake for nights afterwards.
But there was more than anguish upon Calvary—ridicule and contempt embittered all. Those jests, those cruel gibes, those mockeries, those thrusting out of the tongues—what shall we say of these? At times I have felt some little sympathy with the French Prince who cried, “If I had been there with my guards, I would soon have swept those wretches away!” It was too terrible a sight—the pain of the Victim was grievous enough—but the abominable wickedness of the mockers, who could bear it? Let us thank God that in the middle of the crime there came down a darkness which rendered it impossible for them to go further with it! Jesus must die. For His pains there must be no alleviation and from death there must be for Him no deliverance—but the scoffers must be silenced. Most effectually their mouths were closed by the dense darkness which shut them in.
What I see in that veil is, first of all, that it was a concealment for those guilty enemies. Did you ever think of that? It is as if God, Himself, said, “I cannot bear it. I will not see this infamy! Descend, O veil!” Down fell the heavy shades—
“I asked the heavens, ‘What foe to God has done
This unexampled deed?’
The heavens exclaim, ‘Twas man!
And we, in horror, snatched the sun
From such a spectacle of guilt and shame.’”
Thank God, the Cross is a hiding place. It furnishes for guilty men a shelter from the all-seeing eyes, so that justice need not see and strike. When God lifts up His Son and makes Him visible, He hides the sin of men. He says that “the times of their ignorance He winks at.” Even the greatness of their sin He casts behind His back, so that He need not see it, but may indulge His long-suffering and permit His pity to endure their provocations.
It must have grieved the heart of the Eternal God to see such wanton cruelty of men towards Him who went about doing good and healing all manner of diseases. It was horrible to see the teachers of the people rejecting Him with scorn—the seed of Israel, who ought to have accepted Him as their Messiah—casting Him out as a thing despised and abhorred! I therefore feel gratitude to God for bidding that darkness cover all the land and end that shameful scene!
I would say to any guilty ones here—Thank God that the Lord Jesus has made it possible for your sins to be hidden more completely than by thick darkness! Thank God that in Christ He does not see you with that stern eye of Justice which would involve your destruction! Had not Jesus interposed, whose death you have despised, you had worked out in your own death the result of your own sin long ago! But for your Lord’s sake, you are allowed to live as if God did not see you. This long-suffering is meant to bring you to repentance. Will you not come?
But further, that darkness was a sacred concealment for the blessed Person of our Divine Lord. So to speak, the angels found for their King a pavilion of thick clouds in which His Majesty might be sheltered in its hour of misery. It was too much for wicked eyes to gaze so rudely on that Immaculate Person! Had not His enemies stripped Him naked and cast lots for His garments? Therefore it was meet that the holy Manhood should, at length, find suitable concealment. It was not fit that brutal eyes should see the lines made upon that blessed form by the engraving tool of sorrow. It was not meet that revelers should see the contortions of that sacred frame, indwelt with Deity, while He was being broken beneath the iron rod of Divine Wrath on our behalf!
It was meet that God should cover Him so that none should see all He did and all He bore when He was made sin for us. I devoutly bless God for thus hiding my Lord away—thus was He screened from eyes which were not fit to see the sun much less to look upon the Sun of Righteousness! This darkness also warns us, even we who are most reverent. This darkness tells us all that the Passion is a great mystery into which we cannot pry. I try to explain it as substitution and I feel that where the language of Scripture is explicit, I may and must be explicit, too. But yet I feel that the idea of substitution does not cover the whole of the matter and that no human conception can completely grasp the whole of the dread mystery.
It was worked in darkness because the full, far-reaching meaning and result cannot be beheld by finite mind. Tell me the death of the Lord Jesus was a grand example of self-sacrifice—I can see that and much more. Tell me it was a wondrous obedience to the will of God—I can see that and much more. Tell me it was the bearing of what ought to have been borne by myriads of sinners of the human race, as the chastisement of their sin—I can see that and found my best hope upon it. But do not tell me that this is all that is in the Cross! No, great as this would be, there is much more in our Redeemer’s death. God only knows the love of God—Christ only knows all that He accomplished when He bowed His head and gave up the ghost. There are common mysteries of Nature into which it were irreverence to pry, but this is a Divine mystery before which we take our shoes off, for the place called Calvary is holy ground!
God veiled the Cross in darkness—and in darkness much of its deeper meaning lies—not because God would not reveal it, but because we have not capacity enough to discern it all! God was manifest in the flesh and in that human flesh He put away sin by His own Sacrifice—this we all know. But “without controversy great is the mystery of godliness.”