“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Those words were so raw with emotion that we still have them in Aramaic, Jesus’ mother tongue: Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?
Jesus is hanging there on the cross. We can safely assume his face is twisted with the agony of crucifixion. He can barely breathe. And the only words he can say are words from scripture. Jesus obviously feels forsaken and abandoned. No wonder some have concluded that Jesus was only a normal human being, feeling let down because God didn’t stop him from being crucified.
But is that really what’s happening? Is that really why Jesus is crying out like this? I don’t think so. Not least because Jesus has predicted over and again, ’I am going to Jerusalem... I am going to be mocked and flogged and crucified. I will die and rise again.’
This is not Jesus suddenly surprised - Jesus literally feels God-forsaken. This is not just because he is dying, but because the Father HAS turned his face away. That’s what the darkness means, v45. It has been dark for 3 hours – from noon till about 3pm. Can you understand how strange it must have been? Dark at midday? Not just cloudy... dark light night-time. What an eerie atmosphere there must have been.
People knew that darkness was a well-known sign of God’s displeasure – such as we read about in Amos 8:9. God speaks there through the prophet Amos about a coming time when, “In that day, declares the Sovereign Lord, I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight.”
So what was going on? Why was God not pleased? Why has God the Father turned away from his One and Only Son Jesus? To find the answer we need to turn to 2 parts of the Bible:
In Isaiah 53 we find a prophecy written around 700 BC... Words that predict about God’s Servant, that... ’he took up our infirmities... he carried OUR sorrows... he was pierced for our transgressions... he was crushed for our iniquities... the punishment that brought us peace was upon him... and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.’
That’s substitution: he took our place.
In 2 Corinthians 5:21 we read, “God made him who had no sin to be a sin offering for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God”.
That’s imputation: God considers Christ’s righteousness to belong to us.
In other words, as someone once said, ’on the cross God treated Jesus as if he lived your life,
so that he could treat you as if you lived his life.’ Think of it! All of your sins and mine... laid on Jesus.
On the cross Jesus was bearing the guilt of all the sin from the beginning until the end of time. And God can’t be in the same room as sin. So he turns away from his precious Son. Imagine the person you love most in this world... imagine that you are cut off from them – it’s as though they don’t exist any more.... Imagine that magnified trillion-fold for Jesus on the cross. How can we understand what that felt like? Even great theologians like Martin Luther just have to throw up their hands and say, "God forsaking God. Who can understand it?"
But today let’s make sure we do understand one thing. Let’s get one thing straight: Because at that moment Jesus was God-forsaken, YOU WILL NEVER BE GOD-FORSAKEN.
When Christ is your Lord the wonderful promise of Hebrews 13:5 is yours... “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” But have you accepted Christ as your Lord and Saviour? To take hold of this promise you must take hold of Christ himself.
So finally, 4 things we learn from these words of Jesus on the cross...
1. We learn how terrible is our sin
My little lie. My moment of pride. My selfishness. My sin killed the perfect Son of God. That’s how bad sin is.
2. We learn how amazing God’s love is
A young boy came up to his mother one evening and handed her a piece of paper. On that paper he had written the following list:
For cutting the grass: £5.00
For cleaning my room: £1.00
For going to Tesco for you: £1.00
For baby-sitting my little brother while you went shopping: £1.00
For taking out the rubbish: £1.00
For getting a good school report: £5.00
Mum, when you add it up the total owed is: £14.00
His mother looked at him for a moment, and then she picked up the pen, turned the paper over and wrote the following words:
For the nine months I carried you while you were growing inside me: No Charge.
For all the nights that I’ve sat up with you, nursed you and prayed for you: No Charge.
For all the trying times, and all the tears that you’ve caused through the years: No Charge.
For all the nights that were filled with dread, and for the worries I knew were ahead: No Charge.
For the toys, food, clothes, and even wiping your nose: No Charge.
Son, when you add it up, the cost of my love is: No Charge.
That God in Christ should come to personally pay for our sins with: ‘No Charge’??? We can only say, Wow! God how you must love us!
3. We learn that it’s OK to feel abandoned sometimes
In the Bible Job felt abandoned by God. He lost his family, his wealth and his health. He felt kicked down by God, abandoned and forsaken.
In the Bible King David felt like that. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning?” Those were King David’s words first... in Psalm 22:1; they were words of a good person who was suffering and couldn’t work out why. David had big family problems. He was on the run. He felt forsaken by God.
In the Bible, Jesus on the cross felt so devastated by God’s apparent absence that he almost screamed those words of prophetic scripture, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?”
Sooner or later many of us will ask the question. Where are you Lord? When a plane crashes, when a relationship breaks up, when someone you love dies, when sickness strikes, when God doesn’t seem to answer your perfectly good prayer...
At that time, remember that you are in good company – with Job, King David, and even the Lord Jesus. Even good Christians will feel abandoned sometimes. But God’s promise is still true: ’Never will I leave, Never will I forsake YOU.’
4. We learn what to do in our darkest hour
A young Jewish girl lived in the Warsaw ghetto in the darkness of the 2nd World War. She hid from the Nazis in a cave, and wrote these words of a poem on the wall of the cave: “I believe in the sun even though it is not shining. I believe in love even when feeling it or not; I believe in God even when He is silent.”
That reminds me of what C.H. Spurgeon, the famous 19th century Baptist preacher once said. He said that in the “awful darkness of that midday midnight” Jesus took hold of his God with both hands when he said MY GOD... MY GOD...
At the end of the day, you see, when Jesus screamed these words they were not words of despair... they were words of faith.
Those words were not Jesus’ last words.
Nor were they Job’s last words, nor were they King David’s... and they won’t be your last words either.
What you do in your darkest hour is what Jesus did. Hold onto God with both hands! And though you may not fully understand, you hold onto him and don’t let him go. Because of Jesus, he has promised you: Never will I leave you. Never will I forsake you.
This is NOT the end of the story.
Let’s pray together...
