Where Are You?

Where are you?

JCC Good Friday 02.04.10

Read Matt 27:11-54

Jesus gave one sigh from the cross

V 46 ‘My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me’

It was not, "Why has Peter forsaken me?

Or, Why has Judas betrayed me?"

Both Peter and Judas two of the disciples had both let him down

One sold him for 30 pieces of silver and the other disowned him before the people in the courtyard

Yet, the whole of the crowd went on to rejected him

The same people who 4 days before cried, ‘hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!’

These were sharp wounds of betrayal, but the hardest thing for Jesus was the Father turning away from Him

This cut him to the quick: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

It was a real absence that he mourned

Even His saints, when they are near to death, or in their great weakness and pain, still find Him near

Because of the presence of God they can say: "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me"

How many funerals have you been to where they say this psalm?

Yet, it should only be for those who have followed the way of the cross

The world find comfort in this psalm but falsely

Only dying Christians have a clear vision of the living God

Our observation have taught us that if the Lord is away at other times, he is never absent from his people in the time of death, or in the furnace of affliction

The three men in the fiery furnace were not alone

Daniel in the lion’s den experienced the power of God when the lions mouth was closed

But here was Jesus, the Son of God, never before separated from the Father or the Spirit, now alone

God had never forsaken Him before. He said, "I know that thou hear me always." Jn 11:42

He lived in constant touch and union with God

His fellowship with the Father and the Spirit was always near, but now, for the first time, he cries, "why hast thou forsaken me?

We have ourselves at times felt under temporary and partial abandonment

Those times when you feel alone and the soul is dark

Yet, God has never left us

Even the non Christian while here in the body can call on him

Is 26:16-18 LORD, in trouble they have visited You, They poured out a prayer when Your chastening was upon them. As a woman with child Is in pain and cries out in her pangs, When she draws near the time of her delivery, So have we been in Your sight, O LORD. We have been with child, we have been in pain; We have, as it were, brought forth wind.

In other words, as soon as God answers, they give nothing back to Him

No prayer of thanks

No praise for his deliverance

But to you who are His, his soul delights in you

Heb 13:5 He has expressly said, "I will never leave you, or forsake you"

But we may have sometimes felt as if he had cast us off

We have cried with Job (23:3), "Oh, that I know where I might find him!"

It was the hour in which he was made to stand before God as the sin-bearer

According to Is 53, "He shall bear their iniquities."

It is true, "He hath made him to be sin for us."

1 Peter 2:24 puts it, "He his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree."

Sin was everywhere, but He had no sin of his own; yet the Lord "laid on him the iniquity of us all."

He had no strength given him from on high, no secret oil and or wine poured into his wounds

He was to appear the lone character in God’s story, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world

Therefore he had to feel the weight of sin, and the turning away of the face of the Father

On occasion of Jesus’ baptism, a voice had been heard, saying, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased"

But now, God is silent

As He was hung up as an accursed thing upon the cross, he was "made a curse for us

Gal 3:13 Cursed is every one that hangs on a tree"

The Lord his God did not own him before men, but turned away

If it had pleased the Father, he could have sent him twelve legions of angels; but not one angel came

His despisers spit in his face, but no swift seraph came to help him