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There are five final miracles from the Cross of Christ’s Crucifixion that were recorded to always remind us that Jesus can reach out to us from anywhere, at any time, and in any way that we need His touch. To show us His mighty power Matthew first tells us that when Christ hung on that cross of wood for you and for me:
He Touched
The Sun
Matthew 27:45 Now from the sixth hour until the ninth hour there was darkness over all the land. (NKJV)
Have you ever thought about why that amazing detail is recorded in God’s Word?
On the 4th day of Creation week, the Sun was born from the hand of God the Son, Jesus Christ its Creator. The thermonuclear furnace at its core was lit as He flung it off into space to warm and light the planet upon which He was going to create man in His own image.
For all the 33 years (or 12,235 days) of Christ’s earthly life, that Sun had shined down upon its Maker. It has seen Him turn water into wine, raise a dead little girl to life, and feed thousands on grassy hillsides. It has seen Him heal and restore ruined lives deformed bodies and sightless eyes. But now that vast solar furnace that flamed to life from Jesus Christ’s Hand looks down to see those other created things, called humans, murdering their Maker.
The Sun is 864,000 miles in diameter, it contains 835 QUADRILLION cubic miles of intensely hot gasses; weighing 2 OCTILLION tons; at its core hydrogen is fused into helium and thermonuclear energy at 25 MILLION degrees Fahrenheit. How hot is that?
Well, if a piece of the Sun the size of a Cheerio, was taken from its core and placed in Grand Rapids at this moment: even at that distance, it would kill each of us here in our seats this morning with just the energy radiating from it! That is an amazingly intense amount of thermonuclear radiation. And yet the Creator just reached up and [snap] snuffed it out like a birthday candle.
Now wasn’t that a mighty miracle for Christ from the weakness and pain of the Cross He reaches up and just flicked it off? How did He do that? We don’t know.
It wasn’t an eclipse they only last 7 minutes at most and the moon at Passover is nowhere near eclipsing areas. No other explanation than He touched the Sun, what an incredibly mighty miracle of Calvary, but not the mightiest.
The darkness was overwhelming and unexpected for those at the cross, just like it will be in the coming seven-year judgment, there will be a darkness that can be felt in Revelation 16:10:
Then the fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast, and his kingdom became full of darkness; and they gnawed their tongues because of the pain. (NKJV)
But this darkness was part of the plan.
In Genesis, the First thing Jesus did at Creation was to “Let there be Light”. The Work of Creation was done in the LIGHT. But from the Cross, He reached up and snuffed out the Light, because the work of Redemption was so horribly costly it had to be done in the Dark. God would let no one see Him turning of His back upon His Son! As Christ cried in Matthew 27:46:
And about the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (NKJV)
The crowds had heard the Sadducees and Pharisees when they called for a sign; but Jesus told His critics in John 8:12:
Then Jesus spoke to them again, saying, “I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.” (NKJV)
But how true it was now. The darkness that comes when the Light of the world is gone! The songwriter said it so well when he wrote:
Well might the sun in darkness hide,
and shut her glories in;
When Christ the mighty Maker died,
for man the creatures sin.
At His birth our Creator placed a new star in the sky; at His death He snuffed out of the sky our brightest star. What a mighty miracle, what a sign to mankind that they were murdering their Maker.
So Jesus as the Light of the World first reached up and touched the Sun, and then look at v. 51:
He Touched
The Temple