Why Have You Forsaken Me
Series: The Last Words of Christ
Brad Bailey – February 24th, 2008
Last words can often hold special significance. We can think of the last words spoken at the end of any conversation. They tend to define what lies between the two parties. The last words between a child and parent before they part can be so important. And ultimately we may think of the last words spoken before one passes away.. Perhaps you have sought a final word or even expression of love or forgiveness or blessing word with a family member before their passing.
Today we are going to begin with the first of four Sundays in which we focus on hearing afresh the last words of Christ before his death upon the cross…. concluding on Good Friday. We’ve chosen not to follow the order in which they were stated as they each speak for themselves.
Let us hear a portion of what was at hand as Jesus was crucified… and the words that culminate from the events.
Matthew 27:35-46 (NIV)
35 When they had crucified him, they divided up his clothes by casting lots. 36 And sitting down, they kept watch over him there. 37 Above his head they placed the written charge against him: THIS IS JESUS, THE KING OF THE JEWS. 38 Two robbers were crucified with him, one on his right and one on his left. 39 Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads 40 and saying, "You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!" 41 In the same way the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders mocked him. 42 "He saved others," they said, "but he can’t save himself! He’s the King of Israel! Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. 43 He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him, for he said, ’I am the Son of God.’" 44 In the same way the robbers who were crucified with him also heaped insults on him. 45 From the sixth hour until the ninth hour darkness came over all the land. 46 About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?"--which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
These may be the most profound words ever spoken.
If we really consider what is at hand in this moment… we begin to see that this moment underlies the grand drama between God and those whom He created in His image comes to a moment beyond imagination…a moment that reflects the reality that those whom God created to be his own… had given themselves over to another… and the darkness and destiny that had come into existence…and the price that is paid.. As I’ve sat with these words over the past week… I’ve begun to realize they reflect a cosmic cry… that echoes throughout all of time and space.
Early American history has a battle call that is referred to as “The shot that was heard around the world”… well this is the cry that was heard throughout the all that exists and all eternity.
And I begin to see the challenge that what is declared in the words of this cry must penetrate our dangerous familiarity with simply hearing and accepting that ‘Jesus died for us.’ While such words may be true… I believe that we have reduced something of cosmic proportions down to a propositional phrase that over time can easily run right past our hearts.
Never have I felt so incompetent to comment or expound on the words that God speaks through the Scriptures. For these are the words of a cosmic scream… that transcends our ability to fully grasp.
What lies in these words is more than words… more than something we can simply study and analyze. You cannot dissect a parent’s pain in the loss of a child… nor a child’s loss of a parent. How often when news commentators report of such tragedies… do we feel that they are striving to give new facts… when perhaps we just need to stop and face the feelings?
> So I simply want to help us truly hear this cry again… not simply to understand but to feel the reality at hand. … to hear these words in our hearts and souls..
At the center of this cry lies it’s defining reality…. that of being ‘forsaken.’
“Forsaken” means to abandon – to withdraw companionship, protection, or support from somebody; to Give Up - to give up, renounce, or sacrifice something that gives pleasure. (Encarta Dictionary)
It is loneliness but more than loneliness… it is rejection but more than rejection… It is the experience of ultimate and utter separation… separation by choice.
And here in the Scriptures we see the reality of this ultimate and utter separation in all it’s starkness…
1. It begins with the rejection…the scorn… the cursing of humanity.
Maybe some of us can know something of being forsaken by others… or at least fear having others reject us… and cast us from life
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Here is Jesus with humanity cursing him… and casting him from life.
“Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads. In the same way the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders mocked him. ‘He saved others,’ they said, ‘but he can’t save himself! He’s the King of Israel! Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him, for he said, “I am the Son of God.”’” - Matthew 27:39, 41-43 (NIV)
The ridicule that men gave to our Lord was symptomatic of the blindness which plagued their souls.
“None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” - 1 Corinthians 2:8 (NIV)
How ironic that the very One who was suffering to deliver men from spiritual blindness suffered because of their spiritual blindness! The prophet Isaiah spoke of this.
Isaiah 53:3-4 (NIV)
He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted.” - Isaiah 53:3-4 (NIV)
It is one thing to bear pain… and another to bear it alone… and yet another to have is come by the hands of those who have sought to love. Those created in the very image of God… to be blessed to share in his glory… his goodness… are now cursing and crucifying him.
Illustration: This past week news came out of a teenager by the name of Jacob Jett who hired a hit man to kill his parents. He had given a man money, their ATM card, and keys to the house, and the location of teir jewelry… as part of an agreement to kill them. (Apparently … all because he didn’t think he got enough allowance.) The officer who had to inform the parents said it was the hardest thing he ever imagined in all his life. It is hard to imagine the pain of a parent whose own child curses them and seeks their death.
> Yet here is Christ… being accursed and cast from life by those that he created.
WHY?...so that the powers of this world could never banish us. Do you wonder if there is a power on earth can curse you… and cast you out of life? Look at Jesus… and see that it was already taken by him… and defeated…so that the powers of this world and the enemy who seeks to cut us off have lost their power.
2. It is enclosed in darkness….
Darkness covered the land from the 6th to the 9th hour (Jewish time), which was from noon to 3 pm. He had first been nailed to the cross at 9 in the morning… with crowds stirred up… and during the first hours he had spoken a few words. But then came darkness. Three hours of darkness that culminated in this cosmic cry from Christ. During these three hours of darkness… nothing is recorded of Jesus speaking until the cry of being forsaken.
In the Bible, darkness is often used as a symbol of sin, of death, and of judgment.
Hell is described as a place of outer darkness. This darkness speaks of the judgment of God against sin. It was at this time that the sins of the world were poured out upon our Lord!
Nature was bearing witness to what was occurring … perhaps a sympathetic witness of the Creator. Three of the brightest hours of the day turned to the three darkest hours of night.
And what is the experience of darkness? Darkness is absence… absence of light… the absence of the presence of anything beyond us. That is why we naturally fear the dark. It encloses us … isolates us.
When we speak of ‘dark times’ we are speaking of that which loses any sight or sense of hope surrounding us… of connection we can hold onto. Here we find Jesus… enduring beatings upon beatings, being spit upon, mocked, humiliated… and now the darkness of that isolates… and separates him from all light and life and love
It was our darkness… the darkness of separation from God. It was a darkness that came so that we would never have to face such darkness.
3. It is expressed in a scream
It’s not true of the other six statements, but it’s true of this one. Jesus screamed it. In verse 46, the words “cried out” are a combination of two words: to shout and it’s prefix is “up”. “To shout or scream up.” It is often used in Scripture for a guttural scream, a roar.
So deeply personal that it is even preserved in the original language…"Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani.”
The New Testament was primariliy written in Greek… the wider language of the day. Jesus spoke the older language of Aramaic; that was the most natural and local language that He used. I believe the original language of this cry is preserved to capture the depth of feeling, the trauma that must have gone through the mind of Jesus at that moment. There’s nothing quite like the expressions of the mother tongue to get that feeling across. So He screamed this statement and it’s given to us exactly as He said it in Aramaic.
Such a scream comes from that deep place of reaching one’s end. It is the soul declaring it has lost hope… and is going under from the weight it carries.
Jesus draws upon the words of the Psalmist… in Psalm 22. We don’t know what David was experiencing when he wrote this Psalm. We do know that David was one whom God had declared to be a man after his own heart… that he would embrace God even when he felt the weight of sin and separation…and you can feel the separation expressed in this Psalm… a Psalm all would have known.
To capture more of what Jesus related to… consider the words that flow on from that which he draws on…
Psalm 22:1-8, 14-18 (ESV)
1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning? 2 O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest. 3 Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel. 4 In you our fathers trusted; they trusted, and you delivered them. 5 To you they cried and were rescued; in you they trusted and were not put to shame. 6 But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by mankind and despised by the people. 7 All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads; 8 “He trusts in the Lord; let him deliver him; let him rescue him, for he delights in him!”
14 I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it is melted within my breast; 15 my strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws; you lay me in the dust of death. 16 For dogs encompass me; a company of evildoers encircles me; they have pierced my hands and feet — 17 I can count all my bones— they stare and gloat over me; 18 they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.
Jesus lets out a cry that is now the most deeply personal experience of what David described. If you have ever felt something of of being forsaken… abandoned… Jesus took the reality for you. He became the one who was truly alone so that we would never have to.
4. It is the separation between Father and the Son
Every other statement from the cross addresses God as Father… Abba… daddy… but now… he merely draws upon David’s words “My God… My God.” For the first time he cannot sense His Father’s presence.
Illustration: Within these past two week… we had a 10 day period where we were at the emergency hospital three times… with the same child… for different reasons… and it was out youngest… our three year old Cole. One involved a dog bite from a dog other than ours… and stitches on his face. At one point several staff had to lay on him and hold him down… as he screamed… “Mommy… why won’t you help me?”
Those are probably the hardest words for a parent to hear. Yet they can’t compare to the words we are hearing from Christ upon that cross.
We cannot understand the full nature of God… but God has made known that He exists as three persons united in one eternal entity… including a relationship that is the origin of a parent – child relations… the love of father and son. This Father and Son bore an eternal relationship… a perfect relationship of love. Then our Creator and God revealed what no one had imagined in a powerful Creator… a mercy that would become small and dependent… and God the son becomes human… as vulnerable to all we face and feel…. and fully dependent on His Father… whom he would speak to ask Daddy.
What he is called to bear would require a level of submission and trust beyond what any could imagine…so intense was the tension within him that as he prayed to His Father in the Garden of Gethsemane… blood vessels broke and blood was in his sweat itself.
Now the very source of eternal relationship… of mutual love… has turned away… not simply turned away… but turned away in rejection and separation. It is the cry of separation… from the only begotten… the only one who has never known separation of sin.
> Jesus is faced with a level of utter and ultimate separation that is beyond our comprehension.
This cry of utter separation which Christ experienced is nothing less that the wrath of God upon evil. He is bearing the consequences of sin… which is separation.
> More than being lost and alone…. it is damnation
When we think of the suffering of Christ… we naturally think of the physical suffering… but here we are seeing that an even deeper suffering... a spiritual suffering.
It reveal the reality of God’s holiness. God is holy; He is perfectly pure and without sin. The holy nature of God and the sinful nature of humanity are incompatible. Holiness and sin are like oil and water, the two simply can not mix. Our Holy God is so pure that His eyes can not even look upon sin. The prophet Habakkuk testifies in Habakkuk 1:12 that God is his Holy Lord, then he elaborates on God’s holiness by testifying:
Habakkuk 1:12-13
“Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong.”
Certainly such separation is hard to accept… we want to believe in an alternative… a way to reconcile good and bad without any harsh realities and consequences.
In many respects it may be hard to appreciate what it means that God is good… perfectly and purely good… because we have never known anything like it. What we have deemed good is relative… always a mixture of good and bad. None of us are perfect. So good is only relative to us. But ultimately good is good… and evil is merely the antithesis… what is outside of good…. what nullifies good. And that which is wholly good… and perfect … cannot inherit that which is not…. including the moral flaws and selfish needs that arise in any of us. The very nature of true good cannot contain them.
So separation from God is more natural consequence than something God creates or externally imposes. And what God does to provide for this natural consequence reveals a whole new dimension of God’s goodness… as he is willing to bear the consequence Himself… and demonstrate another dimension of love we call mercy..
When Jesus took our place on the cross, He carried the burden of sin for every human being throughout all history, as Isaiah 53:6b decisively declares:
Isaiah 53:6b
“. . .the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.”
Jesus became Adolf Hitler, Charles Manson, Timothy McVeigh, and Saddam Hussein…all wrapped up in one flesh!…all those men wrapped up into one man he would be the worst of the worst.
On the cross, Jesus became the worst of the worst of all sinners. In fact, HE BECAME THE SIN OF ALL MANKIND, all the Hitler’s of the world and even worse! And that is why God forsook His son. God the Father, God the holy one, could not stand to look on sin so He turned away and Jesus suffered the worst pain of all; separation from God.
5. It’s accomplishment is our being forever accepted…adopted into the favor of the love of the father for the Son.
The Bible says in …
1 Peter 3:18 (NRSV)
“For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit,”
Notice… ‘once for all’ … the separation was born once for all. We may feel separated from God… but through Christ we can know that our shame and sin has already been born… fully and forever.
Hebrews 10:10-14 (MSG)
“It was a perfect sacrifice by a perfect person to perfect some very imperfect people. By that single offering, he did everything that needed to be done for everyone who takes part in the purifying process.”
Hebrews 13:5 (NIV)
“… God has said, "Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you."
That is the answer to the cry of Christ…God the Father forsook His Son THEN that He might NEVER have to forsake us NOW! God the Father forsook His Son once for all, that He might never have to forsake His adopted sons now or forever more!
One simple truth that lies behind these words that we must not lose… they are an expression of love… and a choice.
The words we hear this morning reflect the greatest love imaginable. This is nothing less than the ultimate cry of sacrificial love… and yet it can be reduced to the language of logic… “God had to satisfy his judgment so Christ had to take our punishment..” What such a logical summary misses is what was really being experienced … and that he did NOT have to… he chose to. It may have been needed or necessary in order to redeem us… but such redemption was a choice. The God of all creation… bore the unfathomable… bore what defies any human level of relational pain… and bore it for YOU… and by CHOICE. He suffered our hell. Love bound Him to that cross. Not the nails.
It is not the answer to a mathematical problem… not the settlement of a legal matter… it is the most personal expression from the most important source being extended to you.
What God desires is clear. God made a choice to bear the separation that would otherwise be the destiny of all whom he created to love and live with him forever. be the destiny of those created to be with Him forever. Hell is described as that ‘outer darkness.’ He offers a way out of darkness… and into His light and life. Countless lives who have known something of what it means to be forsaken… have chosen to turn and accept this
Have you come to terms with what separation from God really means? To all who receive Him… as the Lord over their lives… he gives the right to become what he forever holds.. the right to be children of God. Perhaps today is that moment to decide.
If you have received Christ, won’t you commit yourself afresh to living for the One who died for you?
I want to invite us to engage in one final reflection with this cosmic cry … through a clip from the film the Passion of the Christ…. And from there… to offer the God who bore our separation… our worship.
Clip – Passion of the Christ (5 minutes)
Possible Post-Conclusion -
Lest we miss just how profoundly God is writing history…. The words of the Psalm which Jesus quoted…. Conclude this way:
Psalms 22:24-31 (NIV)
24 For he has not despised or disdained the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help. 25 From you comes the theme of my praise in the great assembly; before those who fear you will I fulfill my vows. 26 The poor will eat and be satisfied; they who seek the LORD will praise him-- may your hearts live forever! 27 All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the LORD, and all the families of the nations will bow down before him, 28 for dominion belongs to the LORD and he rules over the nations. 29 All the rich of the earth will feast and worship; all who go down to the dust will kneel before him-- those who cannot keep themselves alive. 30 Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord. 31 They will proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn-- for he has done it.
That is the rest of the story… the good news of what has been accomplished. Separation was satisfied… but not the end.
