At the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Yes indeed Jesus was forsaken.
He was not only forsaken by the crowd who on Palm Sunday shouted, “HOSANNA, HOSANNA, BLESSED BE THE LORD.” and then only five days later they cried out, “CRUCIFY HIM, CRUCIFY HIM.”
He was forsaken by the religious leaders. They stirred up the people and had Jesus arrested and condemned.
He was also forsaken by His disciples, when He needed them the most they were no where to be found.
But all of this was as nothing compared to what He experienced when, hanging on a cross, when he was forsaken by God.
“The most gut-wrenching cry of abandonment and loneliness in history came not from a prisoner or a widow or from a dieing patient.
No it came from skull hill from the Messiah.
“MY GOD, MY GOD, WHY HAVE YOU forsaken ME?’”
Why did God leave him alone on the cross?
God the Father made God the Son who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf.
At this moment on the cross all the sins of the world were poured upon Jesus and he bore them all.
When God laid upon him iniquity of all, the Holy Father could not have fellowship with His Son, but rather turned from him.
In paying the penalty of our sins, Christ was forsaken by God. There was alienation from God.
During this grim period Jesus was bearing ‘the sins of all people,’ his sinless soul was brought into contact with the sins of the whole world and this awful load crushed him.
The darkness at the Crucifixion represents God’s divine judgment on sin.
The cross became the place for the pouring out His wrath; Jesus was the recipient of God’s judgment on sin.
Our human minds will never be able to penetrate and fully understand the full significance of the heart wrenching words that fell from the lips of Jesus as He died bearing the penalty of all our sins.
Jesus Christ being divine and of human flesh sin in all its ugliness took possession of his human soul and then he underwent the full consciousness of God’s wrath upon him and the sin he was bearing.
As written in the Book of Concord “neither obedience nor passion of the human nature alone, without divine nature could render satisfaction to the eternal almighty God for the sins of the world. Like wise the deity alone, without the humanity, could mediate between God and us.”
Jesus human soul endured the removal, banishment and separation from God which is the supreme penalty for sin.
As a result Jesus knew first hand the pain of separation from God that is experienced by every human being.
(pause)
Jesus also felt the physical pain of the cross.
Why did this all happen?
The Savior was forsaken of the Father so we might never be forsaken but rather forgiven.
He endured the darkness so that we might have light.
God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God
The Father abandoned the Son for our sake, for the salvation of the world.
I find it hard to grasp the mystery and the magnitude of this truth.
As Martin Luther once said God forsaking God, who can fully understand it?
Yet even with my minute grasp of this reality,
it calls me to confess, to worship and to adore Jesus Christ the Messiah who took on all the burden of my sins.
Let us all always remember Jesus died for all our sins. He did not abandon us.
Suffering and being banished by God for our sins and feeling the pain of the cross Jesus did indeed cry out:
My God My God why have you forsaken me? (pause)
What a chilling reminder of what Jesus Christ the Son of God has done for us.
