Tom Lowe
12/5/19
Why Did God Forsake Him?
Why Did God Forsake Him? It took me quite a while to become comfortable with my answer to that question. It is the title of today’s sermon. And when we are done, I hope you will say along with me, “I am glad he turned his back on Jesus.”
First, let’s listen to what Jesus said in Psalm 22:1
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?
What we have here is something I want to emphasize from the very beginning—a record of His human suffering. We see Him as a man nailed to the cross, “. . . the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). We get more light on this matter by turning to the Epistle to the Hebrews and reading Hebrews 2:9: “But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man” (Heb. 2:9). This is what we are looking at—the One who left heaven’s glory and became a Man. He became a Man in order to reveal God to us, yes, that is true; but most of all, it was to redeem man. Just 5 verses from here the psalmist wrote, “Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same [Jesus was both man and God.]; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil” (Heb. 2:14)
He could save no one by His life; it is His sacrificial death that saves. The writer of Hebrews said, “And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. For verily he took not on him the nature of angels, but he took on him the seed of Abraham [The Hebrew people]. For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted [He suffered and faced the same temptations as all men.; but He never sinned, not even once.], he is able to succor [help, aid] them that are tempted” (Heb. 2:15-16, 18). We see the man Christ Jesus on the cross as a perfect Man. He had learned to rest upon God. He had learned to trust Him in all that He did. He said, “. . . I do always those things that please Him” (John 8:29). But all the way back in that desperate and despairing hour He was abandoned by God. There was no place He could turn, either on the human plane or on the divine. He had no place to go. The Man Christ Jesus was forsaken. No entirely human man has ever had to experience that. No one. Only Jesus alone.
When Jesus spoke these words from the cross—“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”—He was quoting from Mark 15:34, and that gives it unique sacredness. This is how Mark reported the Savior’s words in his gospel, “And at the ninth hour [The Jews day began at 6, am. The ninth hour is 3 pm.] Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is, being interpreted, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34, KJV). Mathew, Luke, and John also included this incident in the Gospel that bears their name.
(Matthew 27:50) Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost.
(Luke 23:46) And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus, he gave up the ghost.
(John 19:30) When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.
When He had cried out again with a loud voice, He yielded up His spirit. The loud cry demonstrates that He died in strength, not in weakness. He … cried … with a loud voice, as a shout of triumph, and yielded up His Spirit. In other words, having borne the wrath of God’s judgment against sin, He knew that He had triumphed over Satan and the curse of sin. His heel was “bruised,” but the serpent’s head had been “crushed” just as it was prophesized in Genesis 3:15.
The yielding of His life was the result of the voluntary surrender of His life for the sake of His own. The fact that He yielded up His spirit distinguished His death from all others. We die because we have to; He died because He chose to. Had He not said, “I lay down My life that I may take it again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again” (John 10:17, 18)? I have heard that there is something called the “death rattle,” that gasp for that last breath that we all want so badly. It is always a struggle and it comes with great effort. The two thieves on their crosses undoubtedly died that way, but our Lord didn’t go that way. He dismissed His Spirit. He went willingly.
Normally, victims of crucifixion died much slower deaths. Jesus being in control, simply yielded up His soul, committing it to God. Thus He “offered Himself without spot or blemish to God” (Hebrews 9:14).
A Roman centurion was so overwhelmed by the scene that he glorified God, saying, “Certainly this was a righteous Man!”
Finally, Let’s look just a little closer at Matthew 27:46.
(Matthew 27:46) And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
At about 3:00 p.m. (the ninth hour for the Hebrews), He cried out with a loud voice, saying (in Aramaic), “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” The answer is found in Psalm 22:3, “. . . You are holy, enthroned in the praises of Israel.” Because God is holy, He cannot overlook sin. On the contrary, He must punish it. The Lord Jesus had no sin of His own, but He took the guilt of our sins upon Himself. When God, as Judge, looked down and saw our sins upon the sinless Substitute, He withdrew from the Son of His love. It was this separation that wrung from the heart of Jesus what Mrs. Browning so beautifully called “Immanuel’s orphaned cry”:
Deserted! God could separate from His own essence rather;
And Adam’s sins have swept between the righteous Son and Father:
Yea, once, Immanuel’s orphaned cry His universe hath shaken—
It went up single, echoless, “My God, I am forsaken!”
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning
It is noon, and Jesus has been on the cross for three pain-filled hours. Suddenly, darkness falls on Calvary and “over all the land” (v. 45). By a miraculous act of Almighty God, midday becomes midnight.
This supernatural darkness is a symbol of God’s judgment on sin. The physical darkness signals deeper and more fearsome darkness.
The great High Priest enters Golgotha’s Holy of Holies without friends or enemies. The Son of God is alone on the cross for the three final hours, enduring what defies our imagination. Experiencing the full brunt of His Father’s wrath, Jesus cannot stay silent. He cries out: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
This phrase represents the lowest point, of Jesus’ sufferings. Here Jesus descends into the essence of hell, the most extreme suffering ever experienced. It is a time so compacted, so infinite, so horrendous as to be incomprehensible and, seemingly, unsustainable.
Jesus’ cry does not in any way diminish His deity. Jesus does not cease being God before, during, or after this. Jesus’ cry does not divide His human nature from His divine person or destroy the Trinity. Nor does it detach Him from the Holy Spirit. The Son lacks the comforts of the Spirit, but He does not lose the holiness of the Spirit. And finally, it does not cause Him to disavow His mission. Both the Father and Son knew from all eternity that Jesus would become the Lamb of God who would take away the sin of the world (Acts 15:18). It is unthinkable that the Son of God might question what is happening or be perplexed when His Father’s loving presence departs.
Jesus is expressing the agony of unanswered supplication when He said; My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring? O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent.
Unanswered, Jesus feels forgotten by God. He is also expressing the agony of unbearable stress. It is the kind of “roaring” mentioned in Psalm 22: the roar of desperate agony without rebellion. It is the hellish cry uttered when the undiluted wrath of God overwhelms the soul. It is heart-piercing, heaven-piercing, and hell-piercing. Furthermore, Jesus is expressing the agony of unmitigated sin. All the sins of the elect and the hell that they deserve for eternity are laid upon Him. And Jesus is expressing the agony of unassisted solitariness. In His hour of greatest need comes a pain unlike anything the Son has ever experienced: His Father’s abandonment. When Jesus most needs encouragement, no voice cries from heaven, “This is my beloved Son.” No angel is sent to strengthen Him; no “well done, thou good and faithful servant” resounds in His ears. The women who supported Him are silent. The disciples, cowardly and terrified, have fled. Feeling disowned by all, Jesus endures the way of suffering alone, deserted, and forsaken in utter darkness. Every detail of this horrific abandonment declares the heinous character of our sins!
But why would God bruise His own Son (Isa. 53:10)? The Father is not impulsive, malicious, or being merely helpful. The real purpose is disciplinary; it is the just punishment for the sin of Christ’s people. “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Cor. 5:21).
Christ was made sin for us, dear believers. Among all the mysteries of salvation, this little word “for” surpass all. This small word illuminates our darkness and unites Jesus Christ with sinners. Christ was acting on behalf of His people as their representative and for their benefit.
With Jesus as our substitute, God’s wrath is satisfied and God can justify those who believe in Jesus (Rom. 3:26). Christ’s severe suffering, therefore, is vicarious — He suffered on our behalf. He did not simply share our forsakenness, but He saved us from it. He endured it for us, not with us. You are immune to condemnation (Rom. 8:1) and to God’s anathema (Gal. 3:13) because Christ bore it for you in that outer darkness. Golgotha secured our immunity, not mere sympathy.
This explains the hours of darkness and the roar of abandonment. God’s people experience just a taste of this when they are brought by the Holy Spirit before the Judge of heaven and earth, where they are not consumed for Christ’s sake. They come out of darkness, confessing, “Because Immanuel has descended into the lowest hell for us, God is with us in the darkness, under the darkness, through the darkness — and we are not consumed!”
How stupendous is the love of God! Indeed, our hearts so overflow with love that we respond, “We love him, because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).
The question that we asked is Why Did God Forsake Him? I believe the answer is in these three verses: “And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. For verily he took not on him the nature of angels; but he took on him the seed of Abraham. For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted” (Heb. 2:15-16, 18).
This is the only way we could be saved, someone had to pay our sin debt and that is what Jesus did. It must have been a terrible thing to see, our sin placed on Him along with the sin of the whole world, but because God so loved the world He forsook the Son He loved.
