Tuesday 30 March 2021

Thought for the Day 30/03/21- even the sun turned its' face away


The last UK total solar eclipse was on 11 August 1999 and we aren't due to see another one from Britain until 23 September 2090.

During the last total solar eclipse in 1999, many flocked to Cornwall – the only place in the UK to witness totality, meaning the skies went completely dark.

I confess I was there, up a hill with a lot of people in long hair, purple baggy pants and sandals, grooving (we did that then) to the drumming and watching the sun disappear.

What you don't realise when you just read about eclipses is that it deeply affects the whole of creation.

The birds stop singing as if it's twilight.

The sheep turn away from their daytime grazing (in slight confusion) and they start to head back to safe lying places for the night.

Confusion in Creation quickly comes into play

Things way above the earth are WAY out of whack when the sun goes out, and you can tell just by looking around. 

Even when you know what's coming and are prepared for what's going on, this sort of event is surprisingly unsettling.

And that's the thing. 

These castastrophic-seeming events in the cosmos - even when you're aware of the astromomy - really force you to sit up and realise something really momentous is going on.

And there Jesus hangs on the Cross ... and the lights go out as the Creator, along with Creation, seemed to turn a sorrowing face away from the Saviour.

Something awful is going on there, and the signs are that the awfulness that's happening is resting, and settling, on the Son.

Here's where our Verse for the Day today comes in:


"From noon until three in the afternoon 

darkness came over all the land."

                                         Matthew 27:45





Now the big thing to notice is this: this event has parallels to something that the Old Testament calls the Day of the Lord.

Let me show you darkness in the day of the Lord.

Darkness in the Day of the Lord

  • The prohet Joel visualised the coming Day of the Lord like this:


"... the earth shakes,
    the heavens tremble,
the sun and moon are darkened,
    and the stars no longer shine.
11 The Lord thunders
    at the head of his army;
his forces are beyond number,
    and mighty is the army that obeys his command.
The day of the Lord is great;
    it is dreadful.
    Who can endure it?"

                                                       Joel 2:10-11


The Lord is clearly there coming to conquer the sin-sourced chaos in Creation, but there are  things there that have only begun to happen as Christ deals with sin at Calvary ... there's a lot more there than just the sky going dark ... clearly there were more things to come.


  • Amos visualised the Day of the Lord like this:



"The Lord has sworn by himself, the Pride of Jacob: ‘I will never forget anything they have done.

"‘Will not the land tremble for this,
    and all who live in it mourn?
The whole land will rise like the Nile;
    it will be stirred up and then sink
    like the river of Egypt.
‘In that day,’ declares the Sovereign Lord,
‘I will make the sun go down at noon
    and darken the earth in broad  daylight.
 I will turn your religious festivals into mourning
    and all your singing into weeping.
I will make all of you wear sackcloth
    and shave your heads.
I will make that time like mourning for an only son
    and the end of it like a bitter day."
                                                   Amos 8:8-10

Did you notice that again? There's more to come that didn't happen yet but Calvary's  there too with the darkening of the sun!

What we read of in Matthew 27 at Calvary is a partial fulfilment of the Old Testament's Day of the Lord.

Those three hours are a foretaste of what's coming


It really is not yet the whole lot of it ... there are things mentioned there that in the account of what happened at Clavary quite simply have not happened yet.

It looks like the Lord's made a start on it, but there is a lot of stuff still to come ... check that out in what Jesus says about what to exprect in Mark's Gospel chapter thirteen:

"in those days, following that distress,
‘“the sun will be darkened,
    and the moon will not give its light; 
the stars will fall from the sky,
    and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.”
"‘At that time people will see the Son of Man 
coming in clouds with great power and glory. 
And he will send his angels and gather his elect 
from the four winds, 
from the ends of the earth 
to the ends of the heavens."
                                                       Mark 13:24-27
                                                  

Calvary's darkness was incredibly REAL, but in fact was only a three-hour foretaste of the great day of the coming victory of God.


The Point

Something astonishing happens to the sunlight at Calvary.

It's more exceptional even than it looks because astronomically the movement of the planets was such that they couldn't have caused a solar eclipse - a natural one -  on that day.

Something huge was happening in the Heavens to show that Heaven will be coming, as the price of God's victory over sin, death and hell was getting paid on the Cross and that is glorious!

Its a foretaste of what IS coming.

But realising the gains awaits another day.

That'll be the day Christ returns to banish sorrow and sighing, tears and death.

We have the promise and the evidence of it, but until that future day comes, brokenness is still real in Creation.

Full healing is actually in the atonement, but only in the future of the atonement ... not yet.


The takeaway

It's GLORIOUS what Christ hasdone on the Cross.

But we need to be realistic about what Christ has done, and what yet remains for Him to do.

The partial realisation as yet of His banishment of sin, suffering death and tears is pointing forward to what's yet to come.

But if we expect more than He's promised of that in the here and the now, we'll end up adding to the pain and the brokenness of the present time as furstraion casts doubt on the reality.

The darkness shows us the Day of the Lord was being inaugurated ... but its' full realisation awaits a day in the future.

And until then, where that leaves us is this: we praise Him for all that is past, and we trust Him for what's yet to come.

If we can pray with you about any of this, please feel free to use the contact form below.


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