In the sermon 'The Last Three Hours of Jesus On The Cross' by Robert Ziegler, the preacher explores the profound events during the final hours of Jesus' crucifixion as recounted in Matthew 27:45-50. The sermon begins with the darkness that covered the land, which Ziegler interprets as a divine act symbolizing God's judgment, drawing parallels to Old Testament events and prophecies, such as the ninth plague in Egypt and Amos 8. The preacher emphasizes the significance of Jesus' cry, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' as a reflection of the intense physical and spiritual suffering Jesus endured, highlighting the fulfillment of prophecies and the concept of Jesus as the ultimate scapegoat and Passover lamb. Ziegler critiques the response of the people at the crucifixion and underscores the importance of understanding the gravity of sin through the lens of the cross. The sermon concludes with the significance of Jesus' proclamation 'It is finished,' signifying the completion of his redemptive work, and calls for believers to reflect on the cross, urging them to live lives of sacrificial service and to embrace the hope offered through Christ's death and resurrection.

I'll be reading Matthew 27 verses 45 through 50. Now from the sixth hour until the ninth hour there was darkness all over the land 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? Some of those who stood there, when they heard that, said, this man is calling for Elijah. Immediately, one of them ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine, and put it on a reed, and offered it to him to drink. The rest said, Let him alone.

Let us see if Elijah will come to save him. And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up His Spirit. Oh Father, we beseech You, we're a needy people today. We need to hear words from Your very mouth. We know that the Scripture is the truth because your word is truth.

Lord, help us by application to ask ourselves the question today, is the death of Christ a reality in our lives? In Jesus' name. If you've ever been on an airplane, or if you haven't, you'll understand, but in front of you there's a little pouch and often a magazine. And if you pull it out and you look to the back, you can see a map often and I'm just going to stick with the United States, but you can see every city that the certain airline might be flying flies into and out of, and there are lines connecting those cities where they fly. And a lot of times when you look, you see this one city, and the dot on it is no longer the dot that are the other cities, but it's a larger dot because every city flies in and out of that city.

And you just see lines coming in and out from all directions. And when we think about the scripture today, that's very similar to where we're at. On a timeline, understanding of things, everything up to this point, There have been so many things that have been pointing to this. Creation, and we might talk about that a little bit. But you think about the garden.

When Adam and Eve sinned, and you think about the covering that God gave them. You think about Abraham, which we just read in Genesis 22. You think about the nation of Israel, whom God took out of the land and bondage and led them into the promised land. You think about the law being given during that time. You think about all the prophets and all the prophecies.

Some say over 300 prophecies pointing to life and work of Jesus Christ. And now you come into a culmination of events, really. The life of Jesus Christ, as we've taken a look at, in the last almost two years here, in the book of Matthew. And here we come to his death, really the fulfillment of so many of those things. And then when you look at the other side of that, what has transpired after this point?

I was going to work this week, and one of the mornings I was listening to Ravi Zacharias talk about truth. And he was talking about it in a sense of if we developed a truth test for anything and we passed through it, it would all have to point to or find its root in Jesus Christ. And so everything up to this point and everything after this point is Jesus Christ. And that's the significance of the passage. And yet, we're going to take a look at just five verses today.

And there's not a lot of narrative in it. And so we're going to have to use some of those pictures, we're going to have to use some of those truths written afterwards to understand what's going on. And here's the thing, as I've been studying here this last week, is that it's a daunting task. It seems daunting. And when we consider everything that it's connected to, I think that within eternity we'll still be considering it.

But yet the sum of this is simple enough that a child can understand. And two things, that God is glorious and that Christ came and died for those who would believe on him. And so that's the simple truth of what we'll be looking at today. To get into the text, it helps to understand the paces at which we've been going. Really, in the last 72 verses, Matthew's covered 12 hours, and it's been really nonstop activity.

Starting in Gethsemane, he's betrayed. He's taken to Annas, then to Caiaphas, then the religious leaders, then to Herod. Oh, excuse me, then to Pilate, then to Herod, then back to Pilate. Now he's been crucified and last week we saw that he was mocked and scorned by every sort of people. And so it's just been fast-paced.

If we were in a car driving looking, we'd be going 60 miles an hour. And now all of a sudden, in verse 45, we can easily read over this verse and think that Just a couple points have been said that would allow us to get to 46. One of those points being darkness coming over the earth and just the time period from noon to 3 p.m. And you would think there would not be much there. But I think we need to stop and consider.

Stop and consider, because as Matthew has described 12 hours and 72 verses, he's describing three whole hours in just one verse here. That should help us stop and think maybe something more here is going on. The second thing that I've already referred to is darkness. Darkness. And I want you to consider the times in your life where darkness has come upon you unexpectedly.

You know, even when you're young sometimes, the expected darkness brings anticipation. But when darkness comes unexpectedly, like an empower outage, That's the only thing that I can relate to. Whatever you're doing at that point is stopped and things change. Things change. And so understand this is not something that can be explained like wires going out or power being taken away.

This is something greater. And so in that and in that understanding, we should approach these verses with a little bit more awareness, a little bit more attention, with our senses heightened. And so let's try to learn. Let's try to learn and see what's going on here. And darkness is our first teacher.

Darkness is our first teacher. First off, God brought the darkness. From what I know so far and from what I believe, I don't believe that man can control the sun yet. He might be trying some day, but not yet, and definitely not during that time. Now some people will say that this was an eclipse that came, but the answer to this is interesting.

And it shows God had a plan. And that on this day, you know that it was the Feast of the Passover. The Feast of the Passover was determined by the lunar cycles, more importantly putting it on the day of the full moon. And so if you understand anything about eclipses, it's completely impossible for an eclipse to happen during the time of a full moon. So we know there's nothing within the natural order of things that could have explained this except that God made it dark at high noon during the height of the sun, during the heat of the day.

We take a look at scripture and we find a little bit more about this darkness prophesied in Amos 8. I'm going to read that for us. And it shall come to pass in that day, says the Lord God, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day, and I will turn your feasts into morning and your songs into lamentation, and I will bring up sackcloth upon all loins and baldness upon every head, and I will make it as the morning of an only sun, and the end thereof as a bitter day." And so, from Scripture we understand that this darkness that has come is God's judgment. God has brought His judgment to this place and to this land in particular. And this is not a hasty conclusion that we can think that this is out of the ordinary from the way that God works.

We take a look in history that had already been fulfilled. We see that in the ninth plague concerning Egypt in Exodus 10, that Moses raised his staff and caused darkness to come over the whole land for three whole days, except for the dwelling places of the Israelites. We see that darkness was present with God when he gave the law on Mount Sinai. And we see in Psalms 97 that clouds and darkness surround him. Righteousness and justice are the foundation of His throne.

In Psalms 88 it makes it more clear, the psalmist connects darkness and wrath together. You have laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the depths. Your wrath lies heavy upon me, and you have afflicted me with all your waves." So darkness is associated with judgment, not only judgment, but it's associated with the ultimate form of judgment that God has, and that is hell. Earlier in Matthew, Jesus told us that hell is outer darkness where there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. So as scripture is presented, we ask this question, who is this darkness and who is this judgment on?

And we learn from Amos 8 that it was on the land, it was on the people. And so a question can be begged, is this localized judgment? Is this just judgment on the people of Israel as they are crucifying Christ? And so is this just a darkness that covers Israel, much like it might have in the days of Moses in Egypt? Or was this a worldwide darkness?

And from the Greek word, we can't tell. The word is used interchangeably to mean both. There is some historical evidence that it might have been worldwide. Tertullian quoted Thallus in his discourse in 215 that indicated that it was the whole world. And Eusebius quoting Flagon, another pagan historian, said that in the region of Bithynia, which is northern Turkey, outside of the localized area of Israel, that there was darkness and an earthquake on this day.

And so there might be some indication that it was worldwide. We can't dwell. But what we can tell is that there was an immediate fact that the darkness had on this scene where we were at. And that effect is, number one, it stopped and silenced the people. If you remember last week, five or six different sorts of people were mocking and scorning Jesus.

And now the darkness comes and there's silence. We probably can understand too from Scripture that the feasting that was being prepared for or even taking place at that time, probably had an effect on that. Where it said it turned the feasting into mourning. But there's another reason for this darkness, and we find that in the next verse. In about the ninth hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice saying, Ali, Ali, la masabachthani.

That is to say, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? And so we move to this, and the silence is broken by this cry. And this cry is from the Son of God to his Father as he cries, My God, and he declares that the Father had forsaken him. And so before we speculate too far, let's understand what this forsakenness is. And when we define it, simply by other words, let's define it as this, so we can somewhat come to grasp with it.

It is to leave destitute, to desert, to abandon, to allow enemies to triumph, to refuse that the Lord will not go before one. And scripture reveals the connection between forsakenness and judgment. In Deuteronomy 31, 16, and 18, as Moses speaks to the people, he says, Then my, referring to God, then God's anger shall be kindled against them in that day. And I will forsake them, and I will hide my face from them, and they shall be devoured, and many evils and troubles shall befall them, so that they will say in that day, are not these evils come upon us because our God is not among us? Let's understand this, is that forsakenness is a precursor, it may not even be a precursor, but part of God's judgment on people, where he turns his face and he allows evils and troubles to come upon people.

And that is what he did to Jesus Christ. The pictures, as we've talked about, the pictures help us understand here the substance. And what I want us to take, what I want us to look at here is the idea of the atoning work of the scapegoat during the Day of Atonement. Obviously, we understand the parallels here between Jesus Christ as a Passover lamb, but understand also, too, that within the ceremonies, within the sacrifices, within those pictures, Christ fulfills all. And on the Day of Atonement, the day where Israel transferred its sins somewhere else upon this goat, we see that's exactly what's going on here.

In Leviticus 16, the priest brought two goats before the people, before the door of the tabernacle, and he cast lots. And from which the lot, from which goat the lot fell, was to be the Lord's. And that was to be the one that was to be sacrificed, the blood taken inside to the Holies of Holies, and the blood sprinkled upon the mercy seat. The goat where the lot did not fall on, the priest would lay his hand upon the goat, and he would verbally transfer the sins of Israel upon the head of the goat and then someone would lead the goat outside of the city into the wilderness to be left. And this is fulfilling what Isaiah said in Isaiah 53, 6, Jehovah was laying on him the iniquity of us all.

So we understand the fulfillment of his purpose that Christ came in 2 Corinthians 5.21. It says, He made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. Now part of the picture here is the wilderness, and I want us to consider this for a minute. When we consider wilderness, we still think that it might be a place where one can dwell, but really what it's symbolically meaning is that nobody lives out there. Nobody lives out there.

And in this sense, here's what's going on. He's again fulfilling Isaiah 53, eight, which says, for he was cut off from the land of the living, for the transgressions of my people he was stricken. And so the reality of what's going on apart from the picture is this, is that before you've seen the people forsake Him. His disciples had forsaken Him, the people had forsaken Him, the leaders had forsaken Him. And now what you're seeing is that God is forsaking Him.

And with God being the final one to forsake him, you see that Jesus Christ is cut off completely from the land of the living. And with this idea, it is a parallel to hell. With this forsakenness, it made way for the full force of all judgment for all those sins that he became to come upon him. And so you have two aspects here. Two aspects, wrath and forsakenness.

Here's some of the realities that we've talked about that bring into bear what he's experiencing now on the cross, as he is being forsaken, as he is cut off from the land of the living, as all the wrath is being poured out upon him, is that he is now accepting this cup that he was soaring over in Gethsemane. And here's where the mystery comes in. It has to be unfathomable to the human soul exactly what he was experiencing. It was real though. It was horrific.

It was so unspeakably horrific that Jesus Christ would cry himself, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Compare this to other judgments that you've seen, that the Bible records. Compare this to Sodom and Gomorrah. Compare this to the sons of Korah being swallowed up into the earth. Compare this to what we know about AD 70 and what God will do to those who are crucifying Him right now. The horrific scenes that they are.

And yet in all that ugliness, it compares nothing to what Christ was experiencing being forsaken on the cross. It's very hard to describe. To add weight, we consider the idea of the son being forsaken by the father, whom for eternity passed before, had nothing but perfect communion with him. This was what he was suffering. This is what he was expecting and anticipating in the garden that he would say, I am sorrowing even unto death.

Sorrowing so much in anticipation. I've never sorrowed so much in anticipation for something that I would sorrow even unto death. And yet, that only points to the reality of what he was going through. To sum it up, It was hell. It was hell.

What is hell? Unspeakable torment where all your cries are not heard. Unspeakable torment where all your cries are not heard. And so there's an ugliness to the situation here. Number one, the physical suffering that Christ is going through that we've talked about.

The spiritual suffering that we've talked about. The affliction to his soul. And in all this, too, just from this standpoint, all of this being undeserved. All of this is innocent. All of this in a situation where we should be in his place.

And combining all three of those, that is what makes this an ugly situation. So what do we learn here about the cross at this point? I want to read to you a quote from Al Martin. God is putting on robes of pure and spotless judgment. Sitting on the same throne that he will judge the living and the dead on that day sees all the sins of every man, woman, boy, and girl who will ever embrace the Lord Jesus.

All the vileness, ugliness, and in all of their wrath deservingness. And the Father looks upon the Son and says, my Son, you committed yourself in the counsels of eternity that at the appointed hour I should charge to you, and I would exact from you all the penalties of all the sins for all those whom you will be sure to eat and substitute. The hour has come. And while God sits in the court, he charges his only begotten son, while never loving him more, and upholding him with greater power, and in no way severing his own eternal relationship between father and son. The mystery it is, he does truly and really charge to his son all the hell deservingness and let loose on his son the full weight of the divine justice that is due our sins.

All coming from this verse. Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over the land unto the ninth hour." So it was a good thing that we slowed down and we considered. So what does this mean for you and me? Three things here before we move on to the next verses. Number one, God's wrath is going to be satisfied.

God's wrath is going to be satisfied. If he has already satisfied the wrath for those who would believe in him and sacrificed and poured out that wrath upon his son, don't think that he will not finish what he has already proclaimed to do at the end when he pours out his wrath on those who would not believe on him. So God's wrath will be satisfied. It also proves to us the sinfulness of sin. The sinfulness of sin for two reasons here.

Number one being that our sins required such a sacrifice and that sacrifice being the Son of God becoming man, the humility that that was and then going to the cross. That's the sacrifice that was needed for our sins. Consider that. The second thing is this, the cry of the sun. The cry of the sun should be a mirror of what our sins are.

Listen here, you're never going to understand your sins by sitting around and talking with people about them and laughing about them. Never going to understand them that way. You're never going to understand your sins by watching others sin. And then laughing in the background. You're never going to understand the meaning of your sins from the way the world interprets them today.

Through news, through TV, through movies, you're never going to understand. But if you want to know what your sins look like in the sight of God, if you want to know what disrespecting your parents looks like, if you want to know what lustful thoughts look like, if you want to know what gossip looks like, backbiting, you want to know what laziness looks like. Then you go to the cross and you sit there in the silence for three hours, and you understand what's going on that you can't see, and then you listen to the cry of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, in his anguish, cry out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? You know, there was a time, there was a time with my sister when I was little, and our mother's back was turned from us, and I did something, I did something bad. And it caused my mom to turn around and she didn't know who did it.

Well, she looked at my sister and she thought it was my sister. And before anything happened, all her wrath came out on my sister. And we both stood there in disbelief, my sister crying. And I'm looking there thinking, everything that I just deserved fell on her. And I remember thinking to myself, I'm going to be extra nice to her for a while.

Extra nice. That was my thought. Again, it's a workspace. You try to consider your sins and the sinfulness that they are. And you think to yourself, and you think about that scene, and you think, if I'm really good enough, if I'm really good, I can make this up somehow.

And I want you to take the rags that you have. The Bible says that our righteousness is filthy rags. I want you to take a clean rag. I want you to think about that scene and go try to clean it up and see if you come back with a clean rag. It's not possible.

That's why our righteousness is filthy rags. Let's transition. Let's look at the next verses here. 47 through 49 after the silence And after the loud cry of Jesus Christ, man enters in again with a response. Some of them that stood there when they heard that said, this man calls for Elijah.

In straight way one of them ran and took a sponge and filled it with vinegar and put it on a weed and gave it to him to drink. The rest said, let's let be, Let us see whether Elijah will come and save him. To sum this up, the responsive man is a responsive unbelief marked by maybe two possibilities, maybe combined, maybe not, but one of ignorance and one of, perhaps, just defiance. Just defiance. And when you look at this verse, you think, your first thought may be, well, why Elijah?

Why would they even think about Elijah? And there's a couple reasons to consider. Number one, it shows partially that they probably understood a little scripture. In Malachi 4, 5, and 6, we understand that Elijah the prophet was to be the forerunner for the Messiah, and probably in their thought they're thinking, well, if this man is the Messiah, Elijah better show up at some point. And so he's probably calling for Elijah here.

That's one possibility. Another possibility might be, might find an answer in verse 46, where we didn't touch upon this, but Christ's words are recorded by Matthew, my God, my God, why have they forsaken me? First they're recorded in Aramaic. And that Aramaic is the language that probably most scholars generally agree is what Jesus commonly spoke with the disciples. Obviously we know he probably understood Hebrew.

But I think Matthew might have recorded it this way to show that the transliteration and the reference to my God being Ali Ali is very close to how you would say Elijah in Aramaic. And some scholars would even say that there's no difference at all. So partly from that phrase, many of them could have actually thought that he was calling for Elijah. But again, showing their unbelief, if they believed that he was the son of God, why would they have even considered that he would be calling for a man to come save him? It shows that men's hearts are not much different than how they are today in trusting in themselves.

The third possibility, speaking of defiance, is this, is that we know that the religious leaders that were there knew that he was the son of God. And so this phrase that he cries out, this cry, obviously being a reference to Psalms 22, which we talked about last week, perhaps in their just flat out evilness, to want to keep the common masses in the dark through up a little smoke screen. Hey, we don't want these people to go back to their scriptures and realize what he just said and realize that Psalms 22 is a clear depiction of what is going on right here. Let's keep them in the dark and let's throw them something else by saying, hey, he's calling for Elijah here. Now, all of this is speculation.

But the truth of the matter is this, is that they were unbelieving. And it was not the right response to the Savior's cry. In fact, what it demonstrated was a complete, in some cases, a complete ignorance of it. Now in between all this you have the man or somebody running to get the vinegar for Jesus Christ. And while there's many possible meanings to this, I just want to say two things about it.

Number one, it fulfilled Scripture. And if anybody there knew Scripture, it would be more evidence that Jesus Christ was the Messiah. And number two, it was an unkindness. And we learned that from Psalms 69-21. That despite perhaps the motivation, whether it was intended kindness or mockery, that it did not add to the comforts of Jesus on the cross.

And so what is going on at the cross here? What is going on at the cross as man responds, you have this, you have blindness displayed, you have ignorance, perhaps defiance, You have the results of hardening hearts. The results of hardening hearts. And what that is is you misinterpret everything about this life. When you don't have Christ, when you don't believe, your desires, your motivations, your understandings of Scripture, your understanding of purpose, your understanding of any event that transpires is cloudy.

And I think it also shows the depravity of man. The depravity of man who have followed Jesus Christ up until this point and you've seen the miracles, you've seen the preaching, you've seen the truth, and you see this darkness and you witness it, and if you have any indication of what it means and what's going on, you are still hardened after all of this. What does this mean for you and me? Well, it's a chance to examine our hearts. And ask yourself two questions here.

Have you come to the cross ignorant? Have you come to the cross misunderstanding Scripture? Have you come to the cross with your sins? Perhaps you don't know what took place on the cross. And number two, Have you come to the cross with your sins?

Perhaps you don't know what took place on the cross. And number two, have you come to the cross with a hardened heart? Have you come to the cross with a hardened heart, thinking that you will escape judgment. Let's look at verse 50. Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up his ghost.

And once again, we don't have a lot of narrative here. We could just finish and say, well, Jesus died and that was it. But there's again more to this here that we need to consider. Number one, when we're talking about the loud cry, we can look at other parallel texts, and we can see that with the same loud cry, he uttered a couple different phrases. One in John, which said, it is finished, and another in Luke, which he said, Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit.

When we consider the first, it is finished. We need to understand this. Is that Christ fulfilled everything that the Father asked him to do on earth. When we take a look at the work that He did, just in these short verses today, He did a lot. Number one, He made propitiation or atonement for sins.

And with His death, He made reconciliation possible for all the ungodly. And he glorified his father through obedience. With the second phrase he talks about, Father, into thy hands I commit thy spirit. What he is saying is this, hey, I have been obedient up to this point, and I have trusted in you. And when I die, I am going to continue to trust in you.

And he says that with the understanding that after his death the Father will glorify him. Consider Isaiah 62-4. Thou shalt no more be termed forsaken, neither shall thy land any more be termed desolate but thou shalt be called Hethubah and thy land be Lach for the Lord delighteth in thee and thy land shall be married." God is going to raise Jesus Christ up from the dead and unite his spirit with his body and he is going to give him his kingdom to rule and he is going to bring him his bride and he is going to glorify him. That's what he says with a loud cry. And then it says that Jesus yielded up his ghost.

And here's what we need to understand about this, is that this was not a passive yielding. There's an active sense to this, and that's significant. For in John 10, 18, Jesus said, No man taketh my life from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have the power to lay it down and I have the power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father.

And in doing this, he's fulfilling a couple of things. Number one, he is our high priest and he is becoming our high priest and number two, he is the sacrifice at the same time. Hebrews 3.3 says, for every high priest is ordained to offer gifts and sacrifices. Jesus Christ is offering his life up as a willing sacrifice. Just like we talked about the scapegoat, Just like we talked about the scapegoat, just like we talked about the Day of Atonement where the sins were placed on this goat and sent out, also don't forget about the goat whose life was taken and blood was shed and blood was sprinkled on the mercy seat.

Similar to the Passover lamb. In atonement, it is also necessary for life to be taken. And so God, Jesus Christ through dying, fulfills this in shedding His blood and taking His life so that He can conquer death. So what's going on at the cross here? What's going on is that Jesus finished His work and Forever made man's work to appease God to please God and people we reconcile the God blasphemous And what does this mean for you and me it means that we have hope it means we have hope To close this morning, I want to speak very clearly, very simply.

In our study, we weren't here very long, but we looked at three hours. And there was a lot in three hours. And as I referred to at the beginning, we could make connections to everything. We could make applications infinite today. And yet, I go back to the two things that I talked about earlier that I want to focus on.

Is that through all this, through this picture, we should come away with the idea that God is glorious. That God is to be magnified. I believe that all his attributes were on display in this picture, and maybe most magnified when we consider the love that He showed us, when we consider the hard problem that how can a God be perfectly just and perfectly merciful at the same time? We see that answered in this picture where God pours out his wrath on the sins that Jesus Christ took that deserved the wrath. It pleased him to bruise him.

And yet at the same time in doing that, he made a way for all mankind who would believe in Him to be saved from his sin, perfectly merciful. For those of you that, as we considered man's response, and you considered in your hearts your own depravity, your own ignorance of the cross. I want you to consider again your sin and consider the problem that it is to you, the problem that it is to your Creator as eventually his wrath will be satisfied. On that last day, if you have not found your sins paid for in Jesus Christ, you will pay for them with an eternity in hell. And your sin is a problem in terms of how you live your life.

Because your desires are not right, your motivations are not right, every way that you interpret this life is wrong. Because you haven't gone back to the truth, which is Jesus Christ. And so my call to you today, for those who have not yet believed, is to look upon God's mercy. And as We talk about this event pointing back to creation. Consider this.

That at the beginning there was darkness, right? And then what came? Light and life. And here where we have studied three hours of darkness, What transpires after this is light and life. The work that was done in this darkness was given so that you could have life.

In Romans 5, 6 it says, for when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. And not only so, but we also join God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement. So repent and believe, for the Lord has not forsaken those who seek thee. And finally for believers, no application today except this perhaps, as we consider Romans 12 one which says offer yourselves up as sacrifices.

Holy and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. You consider the cross today, I pray that you would love God more, I pray that you would hate your sin more. And that this reasonable service that we consider when we wake up every day, when we do the things that may become mundane, I pray that it would not just be reasonable service, but that it would be everything that you want to deal with passion and zeal