Did the Father turn his face away? (The Crucifixion and Psalm 22)

Psalm 22 challenges the idea that the Father “turned his face away” from the Son at the cross. When read Christologically, David’s cry of forsakenness (“Why have you forsaken me?”) is resolved within the psalm itself: God did not hide his face. The Gospels follow this pattern. Jesus truly experiences anguish, yet Luke highlights trust and communion—“Father, into your hands I commit my spirit”—as the temple curtain tears, revealing open access to God. The three hours of darkness are not evidence of divine rejection but a cosmic sign: the old-covenant veil gives way to new-covenant access as heaven opens.

This truth has pastoral weight. How we think the Father viewed the Son in his suffering shapes how we think the Father views us in ours. Scripture teaches that the Son bore our sins, not the Father’s rejection. So when believers feel forsaken, they can rest assured that God has not turned his face away. Psalm 22 moves from lament to praise and to mission—nations turning to the Lord—and the church is called to live and worship in that reality. It finds its culmination at the Lord’s Table, where communion with God and his people anticipates the day every tribe and tongue will worship the Lamb.

It’s interesting because in the modern day, music in church has largely been considered a matter of preference—people prefer this style or songs that cover certain topics and things of that sort. Whereas preaching and teaching are often viewed as something that’s up to the preacher or the pastors as to what’s going to be taught in the church. Historically, it hasn’t been that way. In fact, prior to roughly the 1970s, it was uncommon for churches to have a worship leader or a band leader. Music was often, if not exclusively, led by the minister of the church.

For that reason, I believe that worship music has become less theological. And yet, at the same time, music speaks to us in profound ways. We need to be careful about what we sing, because what we sing informs what we understand and believe. As Christians, especially, we need to recognize that what we sing in the congregation shapes our thinking and writes our theology.

Some of us in leadership have been having this conversation about a difference that appears in two of our songs. I wonder if you’ve noticed this difference. In Psalm 22, which we just sang, there’s a line that comes straight out of the Scriptures: He did not turn his face away. This line is about David feeling forsaken by God—“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”—at the top of the psalm, and then acknowledging that though he feels forsaken by God, God did not turn his face away.

We can take that line and sing it as our anthem: though we sometimes feel forsaken by God, we can still say, even when we feel alone, I believe he did not turn his face away from me.

And then, on the cross, Jesus takes up those same words from the psalm: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why have you abandoned me?” Yet instead of saying, “But the Father did not turn his face away,” much of evangelical theology says, “No, no, no—actually, the Father turned his face away from the Son.” And that creates a strange theological tension in the text that has profound implications for how we understand Christ and the gospel.

This line shows up in the song How Deep the Father’s Love for Us. It’s a song we’ve sung for years here, often without thinking too much about it. In the second half of the first verse, we get the line, The Father turned his face away. And it’s so interesting because we’re actually going to sing that song today—but we are not going to sing that line. We’re kind of repenting of that way of thinking because of its theological implications.

The Father did not turn his face away from David. Neither does he turn his face away from us. Neither did he turn his face away from the Son.

We are to read the Psalms Christologically—that is, through the logic of the Christ, the Messiah, the Savior of God’s people. In that sense, when we sing Psalm 22—and you’ll see this as we walk through parts of it—so much of the psalm is patterned directly onto Jesus’ life, ministry, and death on the cross. Psalm 22 almost feels as if it were written after the Gospels, even though it was written roughly a thousand years before, because it so closely reflects Jesus’ life.

As we read Psalm 22, we need to understand that phrase—He did not turn his face away—especially in light of Jesus quoting the psalm regarding his own death. We need to interpret it in that context.

And so, we face this question when comparing these ideas: did the Father turn his face away from Jesus on the cross, or didn’t he? Which is right—and which is wrong?

Pastors, academics, and scholars might argue about these things in their ivory towers, but how does that matter to me as a Christian attending church and trying to live a Christian life? How does that matter in practice? Why should I care about this?

Well, we care for two reasons. One of those reasons is that this issue compromises the historic doctrine of the Trinity—it creates a division of essence between the Father and the Son. The doctrine of the Trinity has been emphasized since the second century of the church to combat ideologies that compromise the gospel of Jesus Christ itself. So we care for that reason.

But more practically—and this is what I want to consider today—is how the decision we make in how we read the text affects the way we believe God views us as sinners. How God the Father sees Jesus bearing our sin on the cross affects the way we believe the Father sees us when we sin, and it affects how we believe he sees the world out there that does not believe in him, in their sin. It radically shapes how we understand the Father and how he interacts with us.

So that’s what we’re going to get into: Does God turn away from sinners because of our sin to condemn us, or does he turn toward sinners to redeem us?

To answer that question, we’re going to look at three things. First, we’ll look at the testimony of the Gospels. Then we’ll quickly survey parts of Psalm 22 to see how they prophetically speak of Jesus on the cross. And finally, we’ll address one big “what if” or “but” question as we consider the rebuttal to this idea through the account of darkness covering the land.

You may not be aware of this—and that’s okay if you’re not—but there are people who insist, almost pounding their fists on the pulpit, that the Father turned away from the Son. And I suppose, within the theological systems of those who teach that, there’s a reason behind it. But I want to show you the fallacy of that reasoning.

The way I read the text, God did not turn his face away. I want to make sure you understand what I believe about this upfront: Psalm 22 shows that what feels like forsakenness is not abandonment. It’s not a separation within the Godhead. It refers to how we feel living in a broken world where sometimes terrible, sinful, and evil things happen. Yet Psalm 22 gives us a consistent biblical hope as it points us to Christ.

But before we go to Psalm 22, let’s first turn to the Gospels. I want you to see that even for Jesus on the cross, forsakenness is felt—but it’s not real. It’s not actualized.

Forsakenness is Felt, Not Real

Let’s look at the Gospel accounts of the crucifixion. I’ll read all three accounts from Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

Matthew 27:45–46 says, “Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, ‘Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?’ that is, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’”

Mark 15:33–34 records nearly the same thing: “When the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?’ which means, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’”

And then Luke 23:44–46 gives us a slightly different angle—and perhaps the most important account: “It was now about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour, while the sun’s light failed. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, calling out with a loud voice, said, ‘Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!’ And having said this, he breathed his last.”

So you get a little bit of a different take in Luke. I want you to consider Jesus’ experience on the cross—just consider what he’s feeling. The sins of the world have come upon him, and he feels abandoned. He’s dying a horrific death on a cross for sins he didn’t commit.

And you can think about that theologically—in the sense of him bearing the sins of God’s people—but also just humanly. He’s being falsely accused. He’s accused of being a blasphemer, a rebel, and of causing dissension in the Roman Empire—and he hasn’t done any of those things.

So even in a very practical, situational sense, he’s being crucified for crimes he did not commit. And so he cries out, quoting Psalm 22, “Why have you abandoned me? Why have you forsaken me?” We’ve seen this anguish just a chapter before in Luke—in Luke 22—where Jesus is in the Garden of Gethsemane, praying and weeping. He goes to the Father in prayer, verse 42, saying, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me.”

He understands the pain and anguish that are going to happen to him as he goes to the cross. Nevertheless, he says, “Not my will be done, but yours.” He knows the anguish of this. We’ve seen the emotion on Jesus even before the crucifixion occurs.

Now you’ll notice in the text that it says darkness covered the land until the ninth hour. It was only dark for three hours—until Jesus died. What I think we’re supposed to take from that is that something changed. Something happened. There are theological implications to the end of the darkness.

This is why I think Jesus expressing his human feelings here matters—because, like the darkness dissipates after the three hours, emotions are fleeting. They pass with time.

There are some cosmic and supernatural events that happen. The first cosmic event has a natural explanation, but even in its natural explanation, it has supernatural implications. It says that darkness covered the land. And it’s interesting because in the ESV translation that I just read, Luke 23:45 says that the sun’s light had failed.

You can let your mind go wild with that and think, did the sun—was it in the sky and just darkened? Some people say maybe it was an eclipse, maybe the moon passed over and it was a solar eclipse. But the tradition on this—and I think there’s good reason for it—is actually that dark clouds came in. The dark clouds created a covering over the land so that the sun’s light failed.

It’s interesting because “the sun’s light failed” is a very literal translation. But if you look to some other translations of the New Testament—for example, the Modern English Version and the Legacy Standard Bible—they both translate it as “the sun was obscured.” That means the sun is there, it’s shining, but it’s obscured; you can’t see it. And so, darkness is over the land.

Some of the older translations—the King James, the Darby, the World English Bible (which is actually a modern translation), and Young’s Literal—all say that the sun was “darkened.” That’s an interesting translation because there are different ways to take it. For the sun to be darkened could mean it was turned off, like a light. But perhaps a more natural way to understand the sun being darkened is that it was covered—like if you were to darken a lamp by putting a darker lampshade over it.

I think we always imagine this as clouds. As I considered this passage, even as I went to study it this week, I was surprised that it didn’t say right there in the text that it was clouds. I thought, wait a minute—I always imagined it that way. And we always do—that it’s not a darkening of the sun or an eclipse, but thick clouds that roll in.

We have this cosmic event, and then, after three hours, the clouds dissipate. When this happens—when Jesus dies and the clouds dissipate—we’re told about another supernatural or cosmic event: the curtain of the sanctuary was torn in two.

I think virtually everybody agrees on what this means. It symbolizes access to God’s presence. You have the Holy of Holies in the temple in Jerusalem, separated from the Holy Place that the regular priests entered. You could not see into the place where, once upon a time—not in the second temple, but in the first—the Ark of the Covenant rested beneath the mercy seat of God. You were not supposed to look upon the presence of God, and it was only the high priest, once a year, through anointing and preparation, who was allowed to enter into the Most Holy Place. But now, it has been torn in two so that access to God has been revealed.

Pretty much everyone agrees that’s what it means. It’s not just the curtain in the temple that is torn. It’s not meant to be some kind of supernatural proof—there are archaeologists out there trying to find physical evidence of this, and that would be interesting if we could somehow find the curtain torn from top to bottom.

But let’s not get caught up in the physical curtain in the temple being torn in two. It’s not really about that. It’s about the darkness that caused the clouds to recede in the heavens, so that the veil of the clouds was torn across the sky, revealing the glory of God in heaven.

It’s about access to God being revealed—access to heaven being revealed—as the clouds dissipate. I find it really interesting that the New Testament authors continually look back to the cross of Jesus, where Jesus bore our sins on the cross, since that’s what happens there. But they never really mention this issue of the Father turning his face away.

If that were such an important aspect that we needed to insist upon—even to the point of reading it into the text—you’d expect to see it. But notice, as I read it, it says nothing about the Father turning his face away from the Son. It says that the sun was darkened. It doesn’t say that he turned his back on the Son. It never even says it. And yet there are pulpit pounders out there right now insisting upon it as we speak and worship this morning. I just find that really interesting.

Look at Hebrews 9:28. If ever there was a place to bring this up, the author of Hebrews says, “Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.” Where is it? Christ bears the sins—but not the rejection of the Father.

First Peter 2:24 says, “He himself”—that’s Jesus—“bore our sins in his body on the tree,” that’s the cross, “that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds we have been healed.” He’s even citing these same ideas from Psalm 22 and Luke 23.

There’s no suggestion that theologically Jesus bearing our sins on the cross has anything to do with rejection by the Father—and that’s because it’s not there. I think this is additional evidence of what’s happening here. The Son was not rejected by the Father, and the darkness is about the darkness. It’s about demonstrating humankind’s separation from God. It’s not about saying that something metaphysical happened between the Father and the Son.

The curtain of the temple was torn in two. Humanity gained access to God at the cross, and thus the darkness waned. The heavens were opened. And sometimes it feels like heaven is closed to us and God isn’t listening. You pray and you pray and you pray, and you think, “God doesn’t hear me.” If that’s how you feel, go to Psalm 22—because that’s how David felt.

He was being persecuted by his enemies, even within his own kingdom, even within his own family. And he’s in this turmoil—he’s at the end of himself—and he prays, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He felt forsaken by God, but as we’ll see, he was not. God’s face is not hidden from you, and neither was it hidden from David. Amen.

God’s Face is Not Hidden

Let’s go to Psalm 22. I’m not going to read every verse again, but it starts with David’s feeling of forsakenness. He opens the psalm with this lament: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from my words of groaning? O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, and by night, yet I find no rest.”

Over and over, he prays—just like you do—and yet he can’t find rest. This is the language of one who feels his experience is forsakenness. His human suffering is such that he thinks, “God doesn’t care about me. He’s left me.” But as we’ll see, he is not one who is actually abandoned by God.

David even knows that as he writes this, because in the very next verses we see that David trusts in God’s faithfulness. David remembers how Israel’s ancestors trusted God, and they were rescued. Starting in verse three: “Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel. In you our fathers trusted; they trusted, and you delivered them.”

You see what he’s doing? He is going to his history. He is saying, “Remember, there were other people I knew from the stories of Israel, and they went through hardships in life, but they had this testimony—that they were delivered.” You almost get a sense that he is unrolling the scrolls of Torah and reading about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the hardships they went through. Then he sees Joseph in the Joseph narrative, halted in Pharaoh’s house, and he says, “See how God delivered him? How through all these hardships God never actually forgot him.”

“They cried out and were rescued,” David says. “In you they trusted and were not put to shame.” His anguish in verse one is tested against the testimony of God’s faithfulness.

David doesn’t find God to be wanting; he actually finds himself to be wanted. He finds the problem in himself—in his human weakness and suffering. David acknowledges his sinfulness, his finitude, and the scorn of others.

Look at verses 6 through 8: “I am a worm and not a man.” Men live between heaven and earth; we’re always in pursuit of God, always climbing higher to ascend the mountain of God to him. And he says, “I’m a worm. I live in the dirt. I’m basically dead in the grave and not a man. You made me trust you at my mother’s breast. On you was I cast from my birth, and from my mother’s womb you have been my God.”

“I am a worm and not a man, scorned by mankind and despised by the people. All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads.” David knows his feelings stem from his human frailty, not from God. He has confidence in God’s sovereignty despite his suffering.

David confesses God’s providence in verses 9 through 11: “You are he who took me from my mother’s womb. You made me trust you at my mother’s breast.” David was a worm; he was basically dead, but God rescued him. “On you was I cast from my birth, and from my mother’s womb you have been my God. Be not far from me, for trouble is near, and there is none to help.”

He knows God is sovereign even when he feels hopeless. He knows God is near and that no one else can help him in his suffering, even when there is more affliction. The psalm describes David’s suffering: “Dogs encompass me; a company of evildoers encircles me; they have…”—look at the Christological imagery—“they have pierced my hands and feet. I can count all my bones; they stare and gloat over me. They divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.”

Aren’t these all details of the Gospel of Luke? You’ll recall the Romans casting lots for Jesus’ clothes, even in Matthew 27:35. This illustrates yet another way that David’s experience is patterned not backward—it’s not a narrative written to reflect Jesus’ crucifixion hundreds of years before Christ—but patterned forward onto the Jesus story.

And David, like Jesus, acknowledges his deliverance. So David called on God: “But you, O Lord, do not be far off! O you my help, come quickly to my aid!” David anticipates that God will indeed rescue him. And even Jesus, in Gethsemane, says, “Not my will be done, but yours.” He understands that the Father’s purpose is therefore best.

Therefore, because God does not turn from his people, he has not turned from David. This is the climax of the psalm, verse 24: “He has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, and he has not hidden his face from him; but he has heard when he cried to him.” Do you see that there? David was not abandoned by God. He did not turn his face away.

Verse 23 says, “You who fear the Lord, praise him! All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him, and stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel!”

But you might say, “You don’t understand, David—how long and how hard my life is. You don’t understand—I’ve been asking God day and night, and he’s not doing what I ask. He’s not answering my prayers.” And David’s like, “Yeah, I know—but he has not turned his face from you. Therefore, praise him.”

And the result of Psalm 22—you have to see this—this happens all over the Psalms.

David knew the Great Commission hundreds of years before the Lord spoke: “All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations will worship before you. For kingship belongs to Yahweh, and he rules over the nations.”

Is this the gospel, or isn’t this the gospel in Psalm 22? Here’s my point in all of this: God did not turn away from David. Even when he felt abandoned, God was still there. David didn’t feel that he was still there, but David knew he was still there.

And as we understand the pattern, that means God did not turn away from Jesus, even as he took the sins of all the saints upon himself. At the cross, though Jesus felt abandoned—crying out with David’s own words, “Why have you forsaken me?”—Psalm 22 emphasizes, “He has not hidden his face from him; he has heard when he cried to him.”

And when you feel forsaken by God, when it feels like he has forgotten you, he has not turned his face away from you. That’s Psalm 22.

I need you to understand this. I know that those of us who are in Christ will still sin. I’m not giving you license for sin, but we are in progress toward sinlessness—we have not yet arrived. For many of you, you struggle. You may even hide your sin because of shame, because you can’t come to grips with it.

“If I still sin, then what does that mean about my relationship with God?” It’s the same pattern that happens all the time. When someone doesn’t show up for church to worship for several weeks—I’ve been in ministry long enough to know—it very well might be because of a pattern of sinful behavior. That is frequently the reason people stop coming to church: they decide that, based on how they feel, they have been forsaken by God.

The very thing they needed to do—to set their eyes again on Christ, to come to worship, to say, “He has not turned his face from me,” to recognize in the liturgy, in the time of adoration, the greatness of God, and then to come in humility in the time of confession and say, “I am a worm and not a man; in Christ I have been redeemed; he has not turned his face from me”—the very thing they needed to do, their temptation is to avoid.

Because they think that God has now rejected them because of their sin—or that he has rejected them because of their suffering. You have hardships in life, and the very thing you need to do to be strengthened by the gospel, by the Word of God, and by God’s people—to come to church—becomes the thing you neglect. Because now your life has gotten so hard and so complicated, the very thing that would strengthen you is the thing you skip.

So you skip Sunday to sleep in, to feel better, to get rest—whatever it is that you have supplanted for what the Word of God has prescribed for you to be strengthened by the Spirit of God and his people. You have rejected it for what the world says you need to do to endure suffering: “God isn’t getting me through this, so I’m going to have to get myself through this.”

He has not turned his face from you. Though we suffer for various reasons—whether from our own sin or from the situations around us—he has not turned his face.

And if you’ve never given your life to Christ and you don’t even know what I’m talking about—you understand the difficulties of life, that we all go through trials, that there are temptations and hardships—and you might say, “Okay, maybe I need to come to church; maybe I need Jesus to make my life better.”

No. That’s not what Psalm 22 says. Psalm 22 promises to make your eternal life better. What it does is prescribe a relationship with God—the Creator, the Almighty of the universe—that will allow you to endure the difficulties of your life. Though you will still feel suffering, though you will still feel trials, though you will still feel abandonment at times, it promises that, like David in the palace and like Jesus on the cross, he will not turn his face away.

And so we give our lives to Christ so that we know to whom we belong, and we hope in the eternity when we look upon him forever.

And the naysayers—those who don’t like this, the people who want to say, “No, God turned his face away from the Son”—That’s how bad your sin is. That’s what you caused. And our sin is that bad, by the way. But it’s not so bad that the essence of the Trinity is divided at the cross. But those who want to say no, they look to the darkness and they say, “See, the darkness is proof. The darkness is a symbol of the Father’s rejection of the Son.”

And you might say, “Oh, well, that’s kind of interesting. Maybe it is.” Well, let’s talk about how symbology works in the Bible. It’s really not about the Father’s rejection of the Son. It’s actually about the undoing of the old covenant as it progresses to the new covenant.

In the old covenant, when you died, you went down to Sheol. But in the new covenant, when you die, you are present with the Father. It’s about the clouds rolling back and the heavens being opened. It was always dark since Adam sinned, and now the heavens are open to you through Christ.

The Heavens are Opened Through Christ

This is the fuller beauty, I think, of the crucifixion—that we learn here what’s called personal eschatology, your personal end in Christ. It’s about the forgiveness of sins purchased by the blood—yes, absolutely—but then what happens?

Because our sins were paid for at the cross, let’s talk about symbols and patterns. We’re often told that a heart is a good example of a symbol, right? You draw a heart—what does that mean? Love. Okay, so a heart does mean love, right? Sometimes it means “I sort of like that,” because you’re just double-tapping things on iMessage, or sometimes it means “thumbs up.” Traditionally, a heart means love.

But a heart is not a symbol. Sorry to all of your English teachers who taught you a heart was a symbol—a heart is not. Jamie does not teach that. A heart is an ideograph. And now you know why they say “symbol,” because nobody says “ideograph.”

An ideograph is an idea tied to an image. It’s like a visual metaphor. When you draw a heart, it means love—it’s a metaphor, but visual. Symbols have to do with patterns. If symbols have to do with patterns, we can look to things that are clear and described for us, recognize the pattern, and then place other things on top of that to understand bigger ideas.

So here’s the problem: darkness is not used in the Bible as a pattern for the rejection of people. It’s not actually used for rejection. What is it used for? Well, repeatedly, we observe that God is sovereign over the darkness. What we learn in the Bible is that God is not hindered by darkness—that God sees right through darkness as if it were day.

Look at Psalm 139:11–12: “If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,’ even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you.”

Do you understand that even in the Old Testament, when darkness clouded the people’s vision so that they could not see heaven, that never meant that God didn’t see them? Darkness does not stop God. God sees through the darkness as if it were light. That’s amazing.

Dark is only dark to us. Dark obscures our vision, and we think, “Oh, God—surely he has forgotten me.” But God is not affected by the darkness, and that’s why Jesus is the light. He’s the light that shines into dark places.

The Apostle John wrote that in the eternal Word was life. This is John 1:4–5: “And the life was the light of men. The light shone in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

Do you understand what’s happening there? That Jesus, in his incarnation, has come to earth. And the point of the darkness covering the land is not that the Father rejected the Son so that the darkness enveloped Jesus and took him down to hell. That is not the point of that—because the darkness has not overcome the Word, which is Christ. He is the light that shines in the darkness.

God’s sight is not obscured by the darkness. He sees right through; he sees the sun no matter what. Understand this: the clouds are an image of our inability to see God, but they are never a sign of God’s inability to see man. And so we’re the ones who are blinded by darkness, but God always sees through it.

Second Corinthians 4:4, the Apostle Paul writes that “in their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” That is the gospel—the message of Jesus. It brightens our path toward God. We can’t see, but the gospel allows us to see. The gospel of Jesus is the heavens opened to us so that we can see God.

There’s a comparison. We’re studying Acts on Tuesday nights in my small group, and Lina gave me this illustration—I’m going to give credit where credit is due. She noticed that Stephen’s martyrdom in Acts 6 has impeccable patterning on Jesus’ death in Luke 23 and 24.

I’m going to show you just four points of comparison:

Accusation: Both were falsely accused by councils. Jesus was falsely accused by a council of blasphemy. Stephen was likewise falsely accused by a council of supposedly God’s people of blasphemy.

Prayer for enemies: Both of them prayed for their enemies. Jesus prayed, Luke 23:34, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Stephen prayed, Acts 7:60, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.”

Commendation of spirit: Both of them commend their spirit to God. Jesus said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” (Luke 23:46). Stephen likewise said, Acts 7:59, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”

These aren’t accidents. Luke wrote both Luke and Acts—it’s a two-part narrative. This is intentional.

And then we get one singular inversion in this cosmic symbol, this cosmic sign, where we see a progression from the old covenant—the darkness—to the new covenant—the light of the heavens.

At Jesus’ death, Luke 23:44 (the verse we keep reading): “Darkness was over the whole land.”

At Stephen’s, Acts 7:55–56: “He gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.”

It just gives me chills—literal chills—to think about. This is the point of the darkness: the veil between God and man has been torn in two. The veil in the temple was torn from top to bottom. The clouds rolled back, revealing the glory of God in heaven.

The heavens, once darkened, have now been opened to us so that even in our own death we gaze into heaven. We see the Son of God standing at the right hand of the Father. Jesus went into Sheol for three days before rising from the dead, because when Jesus died, the heavens were closed, the darkness had rolled over the land.

But 2 Corinthians 5:8 says, “We are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.” For Paul, he doesn’t think about death as entering into the grave. Now that the heavens have been opened, he sees it as entering into the heavens—to be at the right hand of the Father.

We have a way opened for us to God in heaven, and that way is Christ.

I actually love this. We see this in Revelation. I’ve been studying Revelation with Anthony and Anali, and we’re told that Jesus is the one who has the key to the door, and nobody can open the door to heaven except Jesus—that he has the key and the door has been opened to us.

John, in this glorious picture in Revelation 4 and 5, approaches the throne room in heaven, and the door is open. He goes in and sees the throne, and around the throne are the seven spirits of the seven churches and the twenty-four elders and the four cherubim, and all the hosts of heaven are around the throne. That means the angels and the saints of old, and they’re worshiping the Lord Jesus Christ on the throne: “Worthy is he who has opened the scroll.”

It’s this beautiful picture of cosmic worship—but he says that the door is open. Do you understand that? That’s what Stephen saw when he was about to give up his breath. He looks to the heavens and sees Jesus on the throne at the right hand of the Father, and the saints, and the worship, and the “Holy, holy, holy.” He doesn’t fear death in that moment. There is no darkness on the land, and he knows where he is going.

The way has been opened to God in heaven, and he knows that way is Christ.

And so, we’re going to turn now to the Lord’s Supper. I love looking at historical Christian artwork. Regardless of the tradition, you get the same themes: you see people down here on the earth—it’s this three-tiered cosmology that we always see—you get people down here on the earth, and then you start to look upward, and you see angels and saints up in the sky.

And then, usually, sometimes they’ll depict God the Father with a hand. Occasionally, they’ll picture him as an old man with a beard—that doesn’t do much for me. I don’t like that. Sometimes it’s just rays of light showing the glory of God in heaven. But there’s this hierarchy where it’s always like The Chronicles of Narnia—it’s further up and further in, into the glory of God, just looking up into the heavens.

This is what I think we should see in our minds as we come to the Lord’s table—this beautiful image of coming to the Lord’s table and imagining this, because in a spiritual sense this is a reality. I’m not saying imagine something purely imaginary; I’m saying imagine the spiritual reality of the Lord’s Supper—that because Christ has opened the way to the heavens, as we commune together around the Lord’s table this morning, that means, first and foremost, that by Christ, who is the way and the truth and the life, he has made this path to heaven, that we can follow him to the Father.

“No one comes to the Father except through him” (John 14:6). As we come around the table, we have communion with God in heaven. But it’s not just that, because remember, we always talk about how communion with God extends to our communion with each other.

And if I read Revelation 4 and 5 right—and I do—it means that we have communion with all the holy ones of heaven: the hosts of angels and the saints who have died before us. It means communion with the Father, with the Son, with the Spirit. It means communion with the saints. It means communion with the angels. It means communion with the twenty-four elders around the throne.

All of us come to the table, and through the blood of Christ, which is the cup, we share in this communion, in this great gift—that the heavens have been opened. All of us are awaiting the return of Christ, when all things are made new, when the body of Christ that is the bread is no longer fractured, no longer broken, but restored into a single communion where all nations and all tongues, from all tribes, worship at the throne of the Lamb, who is the Lord Jesus Christ.

I’m going to ask you that that’s what you picture as you come to the Lord’s table this morning.