The Forsaken Christ
(Lights are turned off in the auditorium)
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light ‘day,’ and the darkness he called ‘night.’ And there was evening, and there was morning--the first day.” (Genesis 1:1-5)
Exodus 10:21-23: “Then the LORD said to Moses, ‘Stretch out your hand toward the sky so that darkness will spread over Egypt--darkness that can be felt.’ So Moses stretched out his hand toward the sky, and total darkness covered all Egypt for three days. No one could see anyone else or leave his place for three days. Yet all the Israelites had light in the places where they lived.”
Job 5:13-14: “He catches the wise in their craftiness, and the schemes of the wily are swept away. Darkness comes upon them in the daytime; at noon they grope as in the night.”
Psalm 105:28: “He sent darkness and made the land dark--for had they not rebelled against his words?”
Proverbs 4:19: “But the way of the wicked is like deep darkness; they do not know what makes them stumble.”
Isaiah 9:2: “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.”
Isaiah 60:2: “See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples, but the LORD rises upon you and his glory appears over you.”
Jeremiah 13:16: “Give glory to the LORD your God before he brings the darkness, before your feet stumble on the darkening hills. You hope for light, but he will turn it to thick darkness and change it to deep gloom.”
Ezekiel 32:7-8: “When I snuff you out, I will cover the heavens and darken their stars;
I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon will not give its light. All the shining lights in the heavens I will darken over you; I will bring darkness over your land, declares the Sovereign LORD.”
Joel 2:1-2: “Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on my holy hill. Let all who live in the land tremble, for the day of the LORD is coming. It is close at hand-a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and blackness.”
Joel 3:15-16: “The sun and moon will be darkened, and the stars no longer shine. The LORD will roar from Zion and thunder from Jerusalem; the earth and the sky will tremble…”
Amos 4:13: “He who forms the mountains, creates the wind, and reveals his thoughts to man, he who turns dawn to darkness, and treads the high places of the earth-the LORD God Almighty is his name.”
Amos 8:9: “In that day,’ declares the Sovereign LORD, ‘I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight.’”
Matthew 4:16: “The people living in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.”
John 12:35-36: “Then Jesus told them, ‘You are going to have the light just a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, before darkness overtakes you. The man who walks in the dark does not know where he is going. Put your trust in the light while you have it, so that you may become sons of light.’”
Luke 22:52-53: “Then Jesus said to the chief priests, the officers of the temple guard, and the elders, who had come for him, ‘Am I leading a rebellion, that you have come with swords and clubs? Every day I was with you in the temple courts, and you did not lay a hand on me. But this is your hour-when darkness reigns.’”
Matthew 27:45-46: “From the sixth hour until the ninth hour darkness came over all the land. 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?’”
[Lights are turned back on]
As we approach the fourth shout from the Savior as He hung on the cross, I’m overcome with a sense of inadequacy to fully comprehend the weightiness of this lament. The story is told that when Martin Luther studied this text one day, he just sat and stared at the words for hours. He said nothing and wrote nothing as he silently pondered this anguished expression. Suddenly he stood up and exclaimed, “God forsaken by God. How can it be?”
Charles Spurgeon also struggled with this cry from the cross when he wrote: “Here you may look as into a vast abyss; and though you strain your eyes and gaze till sight fails you, yet you perceive no bottom; it is measureless, unfathomable, inconceivable. This anguish of the Savior on your behalf and mine is no more to be measured and weighed than the sin which needed it, or the love which endured it. We will adore where we cannot comprehend.” (Sermon #2133, www.spurgeon.org)
My goal this morning is not for us to comprehend everything, but instead to fall on our faces in humble adoration. Allow this shout to startle, stagger, and even surprise you. There are mysteries in this yell from the Lord that I certainly cannot fully explain.
Observations
In order to help us worship the forsaken Christ this morning, let’s begin with a few observations. As we list some of the details and descriptions surrounding this shout, our sense of awe and wonder will increase, and in the process we should explode with gratefulness for what He’s done for us.
1. This is the middle shout. The first three are focused on others forgiveness for those who crucified Him, last-second salvation for a criminal, and tender words to his mother. This fourth exclamation is pivotal as we are privileged to listen in to his final words of agony.
2. This cry comes after a three-hour period of darkness. Jesus was crucified at 9:00 a.m. and uttered his first sayings sometime between then and 12 noon. The Bible tells us that from noon until 3:00 p.m. “darkness came over all the land.” The final four shouts are spoken in quick succession immediately before He dies at about 3:00 in the afternoon.
3. This begins a chain reaction of several cataclysmic events. Matthew 27:51-52 tells us that after the seventh shout, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, the earth shook, rocks broke apart, and the tombs broke open.
4. This cry is a question. This is the only time that Jesus asks a question from the cross. Jesus never asked, “Why am I scourged?” He never questioned why all his disciples fled. He didn’t even ask why the nails had to tear through his body. He did ask why He was forsaken.
5. This question is shouted in a loud voice. Of the seven cries, only this one and the last one are made in a thunderous voice. This word refers to a “big or great” voice. It was definitely not a whisper or a whimper. The prophecy in Joel 3:15-16 sheds light on why Jesus used such a loud voice: “The sun and moon will be darkened, and the stars no longer shine. The LORD will roar from Zion and thunder from Jerusalem; the earth and the sky will tremble…”
6. The shout is directed to “My God,” not “Father.” Notice that Jesus does not call out to His father like He does in the first and last cry. In fact, this is the only time in the Gospels that Jesus does not use the term “Father.” At the point of His greatest agony, as He becomes the sin-bearer, He calls out to God. The Father-Son relationship was somehow changed when He became sin for us. But notice also the possessive pronoun “My God.” This reveals relationship, though in a slightly different form. In addition, this phrase is repeated twice for emphasis: “My God, My God.”
7. This question is preserved in the original language. Jesus cried out “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” Scholars suggest that this was the actual language that Jesus spoke, a combination of Hebrew and Syrian. These agonizing words from the lips of our Lord are recorded for all time so we can hear His anguish.
8. This quotation is from Psalm 22. When Jesus said, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He is quoting Psalm 22:1, a verse that every Jewish boy learned at a young age and recited before going to bed at night. Once again we see the linkage between the Old Testament and the New, and how Jesus precisely fulfills over 300 predictive prophecies. In Jewish tradition, to quote the first verse of a Psalm is to quote the whole Psalm. It’s like saying, “The Lord is my shepherd” and everyone knows you’re referring to Psalm 23.
Psalm 22:7 predicts with descriptive detail how people would react to the crucifixion of the Messiah: “All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads.” It’s amazing how closely this mirrors the language of Matthew 27:39: “Those who passed by hurled insults at Him, shaking their heads.”
Psalm 22:14-15 specifically describes the horrors of crucifixion, hundreds of years before it was even practiced: “I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart has turned to wax within me. My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.” Verses 17-18 are even more specific: “I can count all my bones; people stare and gloat over me. They divide my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing.”
And, while verse 1 begins with a cry of desolation, the psalm ends with notes of victory, just like the abandonment of Jesus on Good Friday leads to the exclamation of Easter’s hope. Look at verse 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.”
The Darkness
Let’s look a little more closely at the darkness that is described in Matthew 27:45: “From the sixth hour until the ninth hour darkness came over all the land.” How did you feel when the lights went off this morning? It was unnerving, wasn’t it? Your first thought was probably related to the circuit breaker or Com Ed. This was nothing like what happened on that black Friday.
At high noon, at a time when it was least expected, the world became dark. Or as Spurgeon said, “It was midnight at midday.” Three hours of light are now followed by three hours of silent “darkness that you can feel” as the light of the world becomes payment for the darkness of depravity.
We know this wasn’t just a sandstorm because it came over “all the land.” It also had to be something more than an eclipse because an eclipse doesn’t last three hours and this was the Passover when the moon was at its farthest distance from the sun. This was a supernatural event where the Son of God caused the sun in the sky to be extinguished.
The sun had gotten up that morning just like it had done over 12,000 times since Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Only this day, as it gazed down from the heavens it saw man murdering its maker. All creation was thrown into turmoil and the sun in the sky couldn’t bear to see the Son who is Savior suffer. For three long hours, men and women crept around in their homes with flickering lamps in their hands. They shook in their sandals and shivered as the sun’s light and warmth disappeared. They thought the end of the world was coming.
There are three main periods of darkness recorded in the Bible. The first one takes place at the beginning of creation when God dispelled the darkness with the creation of light. The second one takes place in Exodus 10 when the Egyptians were cast into the kind of darkness that “could be felt” for three long days. This was especially calculated to confront their belief in Ra, the supposed sun god. The third time of extended darkness comes right before this fourth cry from the cross. Just as an extraordinary light testified of the birth of Jesus in Matthew 2:2, so now an unexplainable darkness notifies us of His death.
Darkness in the Bible symbolizes at least five things:
Spiritual blindness (Isaiah 9:2)
Sinful deeds (Ephesians 5:11)
The powers of darkness (Ephesians 6:12)
The place of the dead (Job 10:21-22)
Judgment (Revelation 16:10)
Darkness is almost always connected with the judgment of God for sin. Listen carefully. It was midnight at midday because Jesus became legally guilty of our sin and was therefore judged accordingly. It was during these 180 minutes that Jesus became our sin payment.
2 Corinthians 5:21: “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
Jesus took the full brunt of God’s righteous judgment, paying the price by becoming a curse for us according to Galatians 3:13: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.’”
Isaiah 53:6: “We all like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” Everything we’ve done and all the sins that have ever been committed were placed on Jesus.
That means that those lies I told my parents are settled on the Savior. Those times I caused pain to my sisters are pinned to the cross. My every careless word skewers His soul. Those times of anger cause anguish to the only begotten. The prince of peace takes my relational conflict upon Himself. All of my sins, and all of yours, were downloaded on Jesus.
When we lived in Mexico I had the opportunity to get to know an engineer who worked for a company that installed sewage treatment plants. I asked him if I could go along with him one day when he traveled to a town that was having some problems with their system. I had been praying for him to come to Christ and thought it would be beneficial for me to build some bridges with him by spending time with him. Our trip took about three hours and we finally ended up in a small town.
As we drove up to the facility I was immediately overcome by the smell of raw sewage. My friend told me that since things weren’t working right, they were unable to treat the wastewater and so it was just overflowing and dumping on to the ground. I have never smelled anything so foul in my entire life. I was repulsed by the odor and the look of everything. I got queasy and immediately headed for the car. Unfortunately, we spent the entire day there.
Imagine with me that all of the world’s wickedness, lies, broken promises, greed, bitterness, hatred, crime, cursing, lust and every terrible thought came pouring into this treatment plant. Imagine a river of filth that continues to flow, replenishing the vile mixture with all the evil done every day. Now imagine Jesus on the Cross with all the accumulated stench and foulness of the world being poured onto Him. That’s exactly what happened at Calvary. The sewer of sin and the gutter of guilt came splashing down on Jesus when He hung on the cross.
One pastor suggests that this darkness is the shadow of God’s back when He turned around and deliberately closed His eyes to the plight of His Son. The physical darkness was symbolic of Christ’s separation from the Father, who is light. John Stott writes, “Our sins blotted out the sunshine of His Father’s face.” God the Father turned His back because in His absolute holiness He could not look at the accumulated ugliness of all the world’s sins that were piled on His Son. Habakkuk 1:13 states it this way: “Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong.” God’s purity demands that He turn away from wrongdoing.
His holiness recoils from the smallest spot of sin. When God looked down and saw His Son bearing the sin of the world, He didn’t see His Son; He saw the sin that He was bearing. And in that awful moment, the Majesty turned His back. He was repulsed by the raw sewage of sin splattered all over His Son.
When God looked away, the light evaporated. God brought darkness to the land so no profane eyes could see the terrible spiritual agony the Lamb of God was enduring as punishment for our sins. No one could watch the physical convulsions and the absolute horror of the vicarious sufferings of Jesus.
The Desolation
The link between the darkness of verse 45 and the desolation of verse 46 is very evident: 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?’” The word “forsaken” is quite strong. It means “to desert, to disown, to turn away from.” This was more than just that Jesus felt forsaken; He was literally and actually abandoned by the Almighty. This cry, shouted out to the Heavens, is met with a holy silence.
During this time of desolation on the cross, Jesus did not cease to be the eternal Son of God. The Father never stopped loving Him. In fact, this was the climax of His love. This was why He had sent His Son in the first place. John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son…” Jesus was forsaken because we deserved to be deserted. He endured the darkness and abandonment and judgment so we won’t have to. He was forsaken that I might be forgiven.
The Father forsook the Son because His holiness required it. Take a look at Psalm 22 again, in verse 3: “Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One; you are the praise of Israel.” The prophet Nahum asked a question that finds its answer on Calvary’s cross in Nahum 1:6: “Who can withstand His indignation? Who can endure His fierce anger? His wrath is poured out like fire; the rocks are shattered before Him.” Jesus took the indignation, anger and wrath of God for us. Jesus received what rightly belonged to us so that we can receive that which we don’t deserve forgiveness of sins and eternal life.
We have a hard time fully comprehending this cry from the cross because we have at least two misunderstandings.
1. We overestimate our goodness. Most of us believe that we’re not all that bad. While we know we mess up, we don’t really think that our sinfulness should send us to hell. Friends, we should never minimize the horror of human sin. It was our sin that Jesus bore on the cross. It was our sin that caused the Father to turn away. It was our sin floating in the sewage of iniquity. Jesus became a curse, and you and I are part of the reason why He did so.
2. We underestimate God’s holiness. God is utterly holy, perfectly pure and abhorrent toward sin. He cannot lower his standards and begin grading on a spiritual curve. He is holy, holy, holy and completely just. He cannot tolerate sin and must therefore punish it by enforcing the penalty.
There’s a story about a man who was brought before a judge for speeding. The fine was assessed at a hundred dollars, but the man had no money to pay. In sheer sympathy the judge did what he did not have to do. He left the bench, laid aside his robe, stood by the defendant, took out a hundred-dollar bill and laid it on the table. Then he returned to put on his robe, walked back up the stairs to his desk, leaned over, took the one hundred dollar bill he had laid down, and said to the defendant, “Thank you. You may go free.” In a similar way, God the Son made the required payment to God the Father so that we might go free.
God maintains His holiness and justice without sacrificing His standards for righteousness. He demands payment and the payment has been made. He exhibited His holiness and satisfied His justice by pouring out His wrath on the one who was made sin for us. Listen to the beautiful words found in Romans 3:25-26: “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished-he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.”
Our Deliverance
Because of the darkness and the desolation, you and I can be delivered. God is holy and will not look upon sin. He is just and therefore must judge sin. But God is love and has designed a way where justice can be fully satisfied. Jesus went through the darkness so that we can have light. He was cursed that we might be blessed. He was desolate so we can be set free. He was condemned so we can know the truth of Romans 8:1: “Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
Here’s the deal. Sin always exacts a payment. Either Jesus bears our sin or we do. If the Father turned His face away from His beloved Son when He became sin, He will certainly turn away from every sinner who refuses to be washed by the blood of His Son. If anyone goes to hell, it’s in spite of what Jesus has done. He’s already paid the penalty. He took the blow. He took the pain and the suffering. The worst thing about hell is that it is the one place in the universe where people are utterly and forever forsaken by God.
But, the good news is that you don’t have to go there. Jesus took your punishment with him to the cross. He died as full payment for all your sins. It’s no accident that Jesus died on the memorable night of the Passover. As the Lamb of God, His blood applied to your life will cause the Lord’s righteous judgment to pass over you.
Charles Wesley wrote one of my favorite hymns called “And Can It Be?” It contains deep theology and a wonderful comprehension of the cross:
And can it be that I should gain
An interest in the Savior’s blood?
Died He for me, who caused His pain?
For me, who Him to death pursued?
Amazing love! How can it be
That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?
