Not An Eclipse: Three Hours of Global Darkness

The total eclipse is a global spectacle, but did you know there was an event where complete darkness lasted for three hours? And it was not caused by an eclipse. Our Lord came into the world miraculously. He started His public ministry with a miracle. Throughout the three and a half years of His ministry, He performed many miracles. And it’s completely fitting that, as the Son of God is on the cross, He continues to work miracles. The first is a mysterious darkness. Did you see it there? Verse 45, now from the sixth hour, and Luke says, over all the earth, and it’s not an eclipse. No eclipse can last three hours, any sort of eclipse. In Egypt, Diogenes saw the darkness. And he wrote in his diary, “It was a mysterious darkness.” Now tonight, it will get dark, and it will get dark because of the absence of the sun. But this was darkness in the presence of the sun. The darkness of Calvary smothered the light of the sun at noon. And it’s God’s commentary on the nature and the intensity of the sufferings of Christ. The sufferings of your Savior were so intense and so awful that God hid them from every human eye. And I’m left there, standing at the cross. And I say, “Oh, Calvary! Where my sin, all my sin, every sin of mine, was punished.” He suffered the just for the unjust. That He might bring me to God. Do you currently walk in darkness? That is, spiritual darkness. Jesus says to you in John 8:12, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life.”