I think our hymns have been most fitting tonight and suitable for our subjects. Let me just adjust this a moment here. Okay. Well, shall we turn again please to the twenty-seventh chapter of Matthew. Matthew twenty-seven. Now I'm sure it's too hot. We'll get it right in a minute. Matthew twenty-seven and verse twenty-seven verse forty-five. Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, Lama, Sabaxanai. That is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Some of them that stood there, when they heard that, said, This man called us for Elias. And straightway one of them ran and took a sponge and filled it with vinegar and put it on a reed and gave him to drink. The rest said, Let me, let us see whether Elias would come to save him. Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost. And behold, the veil of the temple was wrenching, trained from the top to the bottom. and the earth did quake and the rocks rend and the graves were open and many bodies of the saints which slept arose and came out of the graves after his resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared unto many now when the centurion and they that were with him watching Jesus saw the earthquake and those things that were done they feared greatly saying truly this was really in the Greek it's not the son of God but a son of God Truly this was a divine person, they meant. And many women were there beholding a far-off which followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering unto him, among which was Mary Magdalene, and Mary, the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of Zebedee's children. When the Eden was come, there came a rich man of Adamathia named Joseph, who also himself was Jesus' disciple. He went to Pilate and begged the body of Jesus. Then Pilate commanded the body to be delivered. And when Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock, and he rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulcher and departed. And there was Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary, sitting over against the sepulchre. Now the next day that followed, that followed the day of the preparation, the chief priests and Pharisees came together unto Pilate, saying, Sir, we remember that that deceiver said, while he was yet alive, after three days I will rise again. Command, therefore, that the sepulchre be made sure unto the third day, Lest its disciples come by night and steal him away, and say unto the people, He is risen from the dead. So the last error should be worse than the first. Now Pilate said unto them, Ye have a watch. Go your way. Make it as sure as he can. So they went, and made the sample course sure, sealing the stone, and setting a watch. May God bless. that portion from his precious words. Shall we pray? Blessed God, our Father, we thank thee for our service so far tonight. We thank thee for this solo about the Calvary Road and about that blessed one that trod that road and who went to the place called Calvary and bore our sins in his own body upon the tree. We thank thee for all the hymns that we've been singing, reminding us of that bitter sorrow through which he passed. And now, Lord, thou has met us this week from the early days of the week when we saw the Lord entering the city in loneliness on a cold, the fall of an hour. And we watched his footsteps, Lord, we've only touched a few details. We can't do otherwise. It is pregnant. Thy word pregnant with this. with the wonders of the story and the glories of thy beloved Son. But thou hast touched our hearts as we've just looked at some of the details. We pray that once more, as tonight we reach the climax, the very center of two eternities, the one spot, the one hour, the one time, set apart from all eternity, when the great question of sin would be dealt with, O God, bow our hearts before thee tonight, we pray thee. And may we realize what a wonderful, wonderful work was done when that awful black thing called sin was put away out of thy sight forever by thy beloved Son in that agony and shame of the cross. We commit it to thee and ask thee to touch our hearts tonight and draw us closer to thee. We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. I've learned from experience that it's a good thing when a speaker comes up to this platform to speak, if you'll give us a subject, you know. I say to some of our conference speakers, could you give me a subject for what you said tonight? And some of them say, oh, well, whatever you like. But I found, especially for making tape recordings, it's necessary to have a subject. And I thought a lot about this night and this subject, and I found, I think, a title. And I found it in Genesis. When I had the great privilege, and it was a privilege, of speaking at the garden tomb in Jerusalem, early on Easter Sunday, nineteen forty-three. I'd spent all the day before on the Mount of Olives thinking over what I would say, and I searched for a subject. And I didn't get my, not a subject, a title. I searched for a title for my talk. And I didn't get it out of Matthew or Mark or Luke or John. I got it out of Genesis chapter three. And this was the subject. And they heard the voice of the Lord God. in the garden. They heard the voice of the Lord God in the garden. And that morning there were some seven hundred people crowded into that garden, tear upon tear of people crowded in there. And surely we heard the voice of the Lord God in the garden that morning. And I have searched, and this is the verse I would like to take as a title for our talk tonight. Matthew, Genesis, Genesis chapter fifteen, and in the middle of verse twelve, low and horror of a gray darkness. Low and horror of a gray darkness. God was dealing with Abraham, and God was making a new covenant with Abraham. And God was telling him about the future of Israel. And he calls Abraham to go through a dark, dark passage. And it says down there in verse seventeen it came to pass when the sun went down it was dark. And behold a smoking furnace and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces. And Abraham went through a dark, dark experience when God laid out a program for the future of Israel. Tonight Our subject is the horror of a great darkness. Verse forty-five of Matthew twenty-seven. Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. The darkest hour in human history. The darkest moment in time. the darkest scene in all of all the universe there was darkness over the whole land from the sixth hour till the ninth hour we talked the other night when we spoke a few words about the Lord's Supper here as the Lord instituted it we talked about the upper and the nether millstone and the grain being ground between the nether millstone and the upper millstone. And this morning we were looking at what I would call the nether millstone. This morning we read from verse twenty four, the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the common hall and gathered unto him the whole band of the soldiers and they stripped him and put on him a scarlet robe. And they flattered a crown of thorns and put upon his head and a reed in his hand. And they'd bowed the knee before him and mocked him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews. They did all this after they'd scourged him and plowed his back open, just raw flesh, and put that dirty old robe upon him. And then they mocked him. We went through all that this morning. That was the nether millstone. That was the wrath of man. That was the worst that man could do. They spat in his face. Twice it says. The night before, when he came before Caiaphas and the elders of the Jewish people, they spat in his face. But the next morning, when he was in the soldiers' common room, the Praetorium there, they spat in his face. These are the indignities they heaped upon the Son of God. But when we come to verse forty-five, for we closed our talk this morning at verse forty-four, when we come to verse forty-five, from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. That's when God dropped the upper millstone upon his son. If the grain was ground between the nether millstone and the upper millstone, Then the nether millstone here was the wrath of man, but the upper millstone was the wrath of God. And the Lord Jesus there for three long hours endured the wrath of God. Man is finished with the exception of the one act after when they pierced his side, but he was already dead then. He didn't feel that. He was dead when that happened. Man had done all that he could do. He'd done his very worst. And then God suddenly covered the ceiling down and hid his son from the rude gaze of mankind. It said in verse thirty-six, And sitting down they watched him there. And he said a title over his head, His accusation. And this was his accusation. This is Jesus, the King of the Jews. We noticed last night and this morning two things. In the Jewish trial, the trial before Caiaphas and the elders and the scribes and the leaders of the Jewish people, they wanted to make him confess to one thing. If he could confess to that, then he was guilty of death. They wanted him to say that he was the Son of God. And we saw this last night. The high priest said to him, I adjure thee. I adjure thee by the living God. Tell us whether thou be the Christ the Son of God. And Jesus said unto him, Thou sayest, yes, that's right. I am the Messiah. I am the Son of God. And as we saw last night, that was the one crime above all others for which the death sentence had to be passed. If a man claimed to be God, if he claimed to be the Messiah, and he wasn't, then he had to be stoned to death. So they wanted him to confess so that legally he'd made the confession. He'd uttered blasphemy. They said, what more do you want to hear? This is blasphemy. And they... In their way the Jews condemned him to death, but they had no power to put him to death. So they took him to Pilate. Now Pilate had another question. Didn't worry Pilate whether he was the Messiah, that didn't worry Pilate. He didn't worry Pilate that he was the Son of God. The thing that worried Pilate was that somebody would come up to say he was a king. Pilate wasn't going to have any other king there. We have one king, that Caesar, the Jew said that. So Pilate wanted to know, are you the king of the Jews? Are you going to raise a revolution, a rebellion against the emperor? So Pilate asked him the question. When he stood before Pilate, and he asked him the question, are thou the king of the Jews? And Jesus said unto him, verse eleven, thou sayest. That's just what he said to the priest. Thou say, yes, that's right. I am the king of the Jews. So from the Gentile point of view now, he was worthy of death because he set himself up against the emperor of Rome to be the king of the Jews, so he had to die for that. So the Jews, they condemned him to death because he claimed to be the Messiah. And the Romans put him to death because he claimed to be the king of Israel. And it's very interesting as you go down, we were noticing it this morning. It was the Gentiles that put up the title over him, this is Jesus, the king of the Jews. The Gentiles did that. That was Pilate's question. I asked how the king is. But as the people, the priests marked by, as the As the priest walked by, the chief priest mocking him, they came to him. And they said to him, If thou be the Son of God, that was their question. Are you the Son of God? So the chief priest, as they were going around the cross, sitting down, they watched him there, and as they thronged around that awful scene, their question was, If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross. Pilot said, my sentence is, he dies because he's the king of the Jews. The other said he dies because he's the son of God. And so those two lines run right down through here. For three hours they watched him. For three hours they mocked at him, geared at him. Even the two thieves dying by his side, it says, Verse forty-four, the thieves also which were crucified with him cast the same in his teeth. Now it doesn't tell us about the conversion of the penitent thief in Matthew's gospel. This week we're in Matthew, all the week we're in Matthew. When he's the king and when he dies with all the dignity of a king, you see when he dies presently we'll find that he cried with a loud voice and he yielded up the ghost. He was the king. In control of it all. But when we come to this verse forty five, this is where we get the horror of a gray darkness. God covers the scene in darkness. No human eye now could see what was going to happen. God is going to deal with sin. Sin was the gray black blot on God's beautiful creation. God put Adam and Eve in that lovely garden and everything was perfect and beautiful, but Satan came in and marred the whole thing and we know the sad story all down through the years. And sin separated man from God and sin kept man from ever entering heaven. And God is going to deal with this awful thing called sin. God hates sin. As we said earlier in this week, it seems to me that when back in Proverbs, Proverbs eight, verse twenty-two, Proverbs eight, when it says the Son of God, as he is predicted, as he is portrayed there in, as divine wisdom in Proverbs eight, when he said, My delight, for with the sons of men. And this is before God created the earth or the rivers or the seas, as it's all put there in, in Proverbs eight, back in a past eternity, and he went to the Father and says, My delight, for with the sons of men, I think the throne of God cried out, Impossible! Sons of men can't come here, sons of men are sinners. And he says, My delight, for with the sons of men, and the Son of God, amid all the glories of heaven, in that peaceful, tranquil, atmospheric heaven he looked down over the course of time and he saw our cities of wickedness you can scarcely walk down the streets of new york and and chicago and elsewhere today because of wickedness and sin and down amid all those dens of iniquity were the sons of men earth dwellers and it says in a past eternity his delight were with the sons of men And it seems to me he must have said, I want the sons of men in heaven, and the throne of God cried out, impossible. Sin could never enter heaven. They can never come. It was then that God's wonderful plan was worked out, as we've seen so many times here before, and the time came when the sun said, Lo, I come. And he left the glory of heaven and came down here to be born in Bethlehem's stable and to tread that lonely life he taught here. And to come to this last week we've been in these last few days. The Calvary Road. The road to the cross, as we've called our series of talks this week. And we watched him getting nearer and nearer. Going into Gethsemane. Being arrested. taken before the Jewish Sanhedrin, taken before Pilate, taken before the soldiers and scourged and mocked and crowned with thorns and beaten upon the head with the crowns on his brow, and then nailed to that terrible cross. And then we come to the crux of the whole matter, darkness, a horror of a grave darkness. You and I will never know. I don't think to the last, we can't talk about moments in eternity, but right through eternity I don't think we'll ever fathom or we'll ever gaze into or see or know exactly what took place in the dark. But I know this, that there's one thing which God hates, that thing is God's sin. Second Corinthians chapter five, verse twenty-one says, He was made sin. Can you fathom that? I can't. I gazed at that verse for years. I used to think how I'd love to preach on Second Corinthians five, twenty-one. He who knows him was made sin for us, but I couldn't. And then one day I read a sermon by Spurgeon. And he put it this way. He who knew no sin. He said he knew no sin in his birth. And he talked about the spotless sinless holy birth of the Son of God. So that the angel could say to Mary, That holy thing which should be born of these should be called the Son of God. He knew no sin in his birth. And then Spurgeon said he knew no sin in his life. and he followed his footsteps through life, spotless, holy, harmless, so that God could open the heavens and say, this is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. And then Spurgeon said, he knew no sin in his death. True, he was crucified as a man of factor, as a criminal, but not because he sinned. He was crucified because others hated him. He didn't. but in his death he was made sin. I can't fathom it. I don't understand it, although I preached on it many times. He was made sin. And there in that awful darkness, three long hours, how long those hours must have seemed. With all the physical pain, the terrible agony of crucifixion, and every Every hour, yes, every minute he hung there. Those wounds in his hands were festering and getting more and more painful and tender and swollen. That awful bleeding back was getting more tender, more painful. The crown of thorns still on his head. The agony, the physical agony, still going on, but on top of all that, he bore our sins in his own body on a tree. One Peter two, twenty-four. He bore our sins in his own body on a tree. The judgment of God against sin. You think how God judged the city of Sodom because of their sin? He had burned the cities up because of sin. And a sin which has become rampant today, and God's about to burn up this whole place because of the thing that's going on today in the tribulation. Think of how God dealt with the whole world in Noah's time. And destroyed the whole human race. He kept Noah and his wife and his three sons and their wives. Eight souls came through in the ark. But the Lord Jesus Christ was the ark. Noah didn't feel the rain. Noah didn't feel the judgment. Noah went through the storm in the ark. And all the rain and all the billows beat upon the ark. But the Lord Jesus was the ark. and the bills and the storms and the wrath of God beat upon the Son of God when he became sick and when he took our place alone in that lonely, lonely, awful darkness. He says, I look for some to take pity. There was none. Let's look at what the Lord says there in Psalm sixty nine. He says, Psalm sixty nine, save me, O God. Killing is as the ark where the water is coming in. Save me, O God, for the waters are coming to my soul. I sink in deep mire where there is no standing. I am coming to deep waters where the floods overflow me. I am weary of my crying. My throat is dried. Mine eyes fail while I wait for my God. They that hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of mine head. They would destroy me, being my enemies wrongfully, are mighty. Then I restored that which I took not away. Because of thy sake I have borne reproach. Shame has covered my face. And then in verse twenty, reproach hath broken my heart. I am full of heaviness. I look for some to take pity. There was none. for comforters, but I found none. They gave me all so gall for my meat, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to feed. Deliver me out of the mire. Let me not sink. Let me not be delivered. Let me be delivered from them that hate me and out of deep waters. Let not the water flood overflow me. Neither let the deep swallow me. let not the pitch shut her mouth upon me. This is the language of the Son of God. There in the darkness, human ears didn't hear what he was saying. He was talking to God. Psalm forty-two tells us in one verse. Psalm forty-two, he says, All thy ways and thy billows are gone unto me. Verse seven, deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy water spout. All thy waves and thy billows are gone over me. And then the Psalm we know so well, Psalm twenty-two. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far from helping me and from the words of my roaring? Oh my God, I cry in the daytime. Thou hearest not. And in the night season, in that awful darkness, in the night season. And I'm not silent, but look at the answer. But thou art holy, oh thou that inhabits the praises of Israel. God cannot look upon sin. God is holy. And that's why God turned his face. from his beloved son when he was made sin for us in that awful, awful hour of darkness. And these are the very words, of course, which he used. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? And I say again, we will never fathom, and we will never know what it cost. I think through all eternity he will gaze in awe and wonder at that awful season, that awful time when the Son of God took our place and he met all the claims of the throne of God against him in that red hour. Thank God it ended three long, long hours, but it ended. Jesus cried about the ninth hour with a loud voice saying, Eli, Eli, Lamas, are back tonight. That is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Quoted a course from Psalm twenty two. And then in verse fifty, Jesus, when he cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost. Now John tells us that he cried It is finished. Now Matthew doesn't say that, but John tells us. It is finished. All that terrible horror ended. The price of sin was paid. The wrath of God was appealed. The throne of God was satisfied. And he could say it is finished. And all the righteous claims of God's law were met. And the Holy Son of God who became sin for us. bore our sin in his own body upon the tree. And he could say it is finished. And then what happened? He cried with a loud voice and healed it up the ghost. And so we get to the end of this awful, awful week that we've been studying the sufferings of the Lord Jesus, the road that led to Calvary. It is finished and he healed it. He bowed his head and yielded up the ghost. And then wonderful things happened. The veil of the temple was rent in twain from top to bottom. The veil was that wonderful piece of tapestry that kept God in and man out. No one was allowed to pass through the veil except the high priest and then only once a year and then not without blood. The story is they say, the Jewish people say that on that day of atonement when the high priest went in, they used to tie a rope around his ankle, you know. And in case the holiness of God would strike him dead and they just drag out his dead body, God was in there in that holy place and no one could enter. And the holy priest went in, the high priest went once a year in the days, in the wilderness there, he went in once a year. on the day of atonement and took in the blood and sprinkled it upon the mercy seat and the two cherubim looked down upon the mercy seat their eyes were looking upon that blood and God says when I see the blood I'll pass over you and he passed over their sins for one more year on the day of atonement but when the Lord Jesus died The writer of Hebrews tells us in wonderful language that he didn't pass over sins for one more year, but he says this in chapter nine of Hebrews. He says, Christ being common high priest of good things to come by a greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is to say of none of this building, neither by the blood of goats and cows, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained, look at it, having obtained eternal redemption for us. Not like the day of atonement, Passover for one year, but he obtained eternal redemption for us. We used to sing, gone, gone, gone, all my sins are gone, buried in the deepest sea. I shall reign eternally. Praise God. My sins are gone. And he paid the price of our sins. And the veil of the temple was rent in train, not from the bottom, but from the top down. God did it, broke the veil open, and now men could enter God's presence. We could never enter God's presence before, but now the way is made open. And so we can go and preach the gospel and say, Whosoever will may come, the day is open, and we can go, we can get to heaven. Those men, with only added delight before the sun, before time was, They can enter heaven. The throne of God is satisfied, and sinners will be in heaven without their sins, saved by the precious blood of the Lord Jesus. Great things happened. The earth did quaint, and the rocks went, and the graves were opened. That took place after the resurrection. That bit about the graves. It says the graves were opened after his resurrection. And some of the bodies of the saints arose after his resurrection and so on. And then the centurion, when he saw what was done watching Jesus, and he saw the earthquake and those things that were done, he feared greatly saying, at least this was a son of God. There's something different. He's no ordinary man. Ah, but thank God, standing near, there were others. And the darkness must have lifted. And when they gazed on the cross, they hadn't seen it for three hours. And now great silence came over it. They heard the voice of the Lord calling out seven different times, but now dead silence. He yielded up to those. And when these women looked up, they saw the dead form hanging there. Salvation's work was completed. There was Mary Magdalene. Many women were there, beholding afar off. Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joseph and the mother of Zebedee's children. So the Lord Jesus yielded up the ghost. Now, of course, the story soon winds up. When Eden was come, there came a rich man of Adam and Eve. It tells us that with the rich in his death, they took those bodies of the souls whom they'd executed, and they took them down from the crosses, and they, I understand they threw them into this valley of Hinnom, the refuge heap, and the dogs to all under pieces. The Lord said, Give not thine holy one to the dogs. And God at a range said, He should have His burial with the rich. And it says, This man, Joseph of Arimathea, he laid the body in his own new I like to think of Joseph. He built that tomb. And I think of him sometimes as he used to go and walk in that beautiful garden at night and think, one day I'm going to lie in that tomb. And he had it all prepared. And then the day he came when he bathed the body of Jesus. And he took it down. Of course, Nicodemus helped him and brought the spices. And they laid the tomb. They laid the body in that tomb. Joseph's tomb. And then they rolled the stone to the door. And I like the way it's put here. To me it's such irony in it. It says, Pilate says, ye have a watch, go your way, make it as sure as you can. How sure can they make it? Make it as sure as you can. So he went and made the sepulchre sure, killing the stone that's hitting the watch. And these women sat there. And I think I can see Joseph that night. He walked in his garden again. And he asked himself a question or two, he said. That's my tomb. I made that tomb that I might lie there. There's somebody else lying there tonight. That stone's been rolled. And the door is sealed. And I'm not in there. There's someone else in there. Who can you see a wonderful, wonderful story here? That somebody went into the tomb for you and me. We should be in a tomb for all eternity, lost and forever away from the presence of God. But somebody else took our place. Somebody else died for us. Somebody else went into the tomb for us. What a night Joseph must have spent. And the next day when they came to bring this, when they came, they didn't do anything. The next day it was a Sabbath day. When I lived in Greece, as I said the other night, we used to take advantage of the Easter. The Easter was a long holiday. We used to leave our work at Thursday night and get back Tuesday morning. And we always went out somewhere if we could. into some village or some country place. And we used to watch the customs of the Greek people. And, you know, on the Friday night, the Easter Friday, and don't forget, they'd been fasting all the week. They wouldn't need any food that last holy week. And then the people of the Orthodox Church, I mean. And then on the Friday night, they would go into the church where they had prepared a coffin, a casket. This was the casket in which it supposed the body of the Lord was lying, in figure, I mean. And then they would take the casket out, and on their shoulders they'd carry it all around the streets of the village. They all had candles, and the priest would stop at every street corner, every intersection, and they would chant and sing, the priest would... And then they moved to the next corner and go through the whole performance again and go all around the city and come back. They used to say it was a wonderful sight to get on the top of a little mountain in, there's a little hill right in the middle of Athens called Mount Likavetes. And right on the top there's a church called St. John's Church. But people used to go upstairs at midnight on Good Friday just to look down on the city because from every Greek Orthodox church, there was a procession going on. They were carrying the coffin around on the priest's shoulders, and everybody was falling behind with candles lit. And you could see these little streams of lights like worms, you know, all over the city. That was the performance they had there. But then Saturday came in Greece, and all day long they told the bell, all day long. All day you could hear this bells in every church tolling, doleful, tolling the bell, because as they put it, the Lord's body was in the grave. Then of course Saturday night they went back to church and then just at midnight the hype of the priest came out of the holy place at the back. They were all in darkness and the priest used to come out from the holy place at the back there. and bring out a candle lighted just at midnight. Then everybody lit their candle from his candle and took the light home. And they all cried out, Christ, our nested Christ is risen. This is a performance they did. We used to see it. Year after year, I suppose they still do it, and they do it in other countries too. They have countries where the Eastern Orthodox Church has power. But all I'm saying is this. The Saturday was a solemn day. It was a Sabbath day. They couldn't do anything. They just waited in wonder and amazement because those women and those disciples didn't know. We thought it had been he who would redeem Israel. But they only thought that. They didn't know it. The marvel to me is that Pilate did, or rather the chief priest did. The priest said, this deceiver, when he was alive, he said on the third day he's going to rise again. You better seal the tomb. But the disciples didn't believe that. It's strange that his enemies believed it. The disciples didn't. They didn't understand it. They were amazed to find the tomb open and to find the Lord was out. They didn't believe it. Peter had to run and go right in and look to make sure he was risen from the dead. But all that will come to you on Sunday morning, God willing. Let me read one verse. A verse we often sing. Lord, into death thy love could go, a death of shame and loss, to vanquish for us every foe, and break the strong man's force. Oh, what a load was thine to bear, alone in that dark hour. Our sins, in all their terror there, God's wrath, and Satan's power. Shall we pray? Blessed God, our Father, we thank you for giving us some little glimpse, and we can only touch the fringe of such a subject. We thank you for giving us some little glimpse of this horror of a great darkness, the which by beloved Son passed, in those long three hours when he bore our sins, when he who knew no sin was made sin, when the claims of the throne of God were met, and when the wrath of the God, of God, the wrath of the Holy God, God's wrath against sin, against the human race, for the sins of six thousand years, all concentrated into three short hours, and the Lord Jesus bore the punishment for us. We bow before thee, and we thank thee. And blessed Lord Jesus, we thank you now no longer in the tomb. We hail thee the exalted, glorified one. The storm that bowed thy blessed head is hushed forever now, and rest divine is ours instead, whilst glory crowned by brow. We pray, Lord, that with the studies of this week making something in our lives, that this Passion week, as men call it, this holy week. And the meetings we've had together might have some eternal fruit. Take us away from this conference to serve thee better and to love thee more and to obey thy will and to yield ourselves to thee. Help us to do what Mary did, to break the unabashed box and give thee all we have and lay it at thy feet. We seek thy parting blessings. And we ask that you thou keep us through the quiet Saturday, tomorrow for Lord Terry, and awaken us on the Sunday morning, that we might, with the Greeks of Old St. Christ, our synesthly Christ is risen. Help us, Lord. Give us a grade. Easter Sunday, we pray thee. We ask it in the precious name of our Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen.