#64 Forsaken For Us Series

#64 Forsaken for Us

Series: Mark

Chuck Sligh

March 6, 2022

NOTE: A PowerPoint presentation is available for this sermon by request at chucksligh@hotmail.com. Please mention the title of the sermon and the Bible text to help me find the sermon in my archives.

BIBLE READING: Isaiah 53:3-6

TEXT: Mark 15:33-41 – “And when the sixth hour was come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. 34 And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is, being interpreted, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? 35 And some of them that stood by, when they heard it, said, Behold, he calleth Elias. 36 And one ran and filled a spunge full of vinegar, and put it on a reed, and gave him to drink, saying, Let alone; let us see whether Elias will come to take him down. 37 And Jesus cried with a loud voice, and gave up the ghost. 38 And the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom.

39 And when the centurion, which stood over against him, saw that he so cried out, and gave up the ghost, he said, Truly this man was the Son of God. 40 There were also women looking on afar off: among whom was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the less and of Joses, and Salome; 41 (Who also, when he was in Galilee, followed him, and ministered unto him;) and many other women which came up with him unto Jerusalem.”

INTRODUCTION

Illus. – One of the most difficult things to deal with is to feel abandoned and forsaken.

• When children find out they’re adopted, they often feel so strongly the sting of perceived abandonment that they embark on a search to meet their birth mother to get closure.

• If you’ve ever had the misfortune of having a spouse cheat on you and then leave you and the children you had together, you know how horrible it is to be forsaken.

• I read recently of a man accused of killing a woman years ago before DNA testing. He was exonerated 25 years later due to modern DNA testing. It was bad enough to be incarcerated all that time on a false charge, but the worst part of it was that his friends and even most of his family members abandoned him. They assumed his guilt and cut off all contact with him in prison.

To be forsaken truly is awful. If anyone knew what it was like to be forsaken, it was Jesus. One of His disciples, Judas, betrayed Him. All of the Twelve forsook Him when Jesus was captured, even though they had bravely boasted they would not forsake Him. One of them, Peter, denied Jesus three times. During the long hours of both of His trials, Jesus had no one with Him on His side.

But that was not the worst experience of being forsaken Jesus experienced. Today we look at the death of Jesus, how it happened, and what it meant for us.

I. IN VERSES 33-36, WE SEE GOD THE FATHER FORSAKING GOD THE SON.

The dreadful act of the Father’s abandonment was preceded by a miraculous portent – Look first with me at verse 33 – “And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.

When it was the sixth hour, which is 9:00 AM by the Roman reckoning of time, Mark says darkness covered the whole land until the ninth hour, which was noon. Among the ancients, the deaths of great heroes were often embellished with occurrences of extraordinary phenomena. James R. Edwards tells us that these mythical occurrences were regarded as “divine eulogies honoring the noble dead.”

But the darkness that enveloped Israel at the death of Jesus was not a divine eulogy, but its opposite. It was rather something ominous, like the plague of darkness over Egypt in the Exodus story or the darkness of chaos before creation in Genesis 1:2.

Probably this was not a worldwide eclipse, but a local darkening around Jerusalem and its environs since there are no recorded eclipses at this time in the historical record. Whatever its extent, Mark indicates that the eclipse occurred suddenly. Contrast this lonely darkness until noontime with the brightness and joyousness of angels at midnight that accompanied the birth of Jesus. The darkness over the land signified the curse of God just as the plague of darkness did in the Exodus before the Passover Lamb was slain. It was during these horrible three hours that Jesus experienced the full judgment of our sins on the cross.

We know this because of the next verse, verse 34 – “And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lama sabacthani?’ which is, being interpreted, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’”