Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?

INTRODUCTION

At the age of 41,Elizabeth Barrett became the wife of Robert Browning, the famous English poet. Her father, a

widower, disowned her.He objected to the marriage

and disowned her simply because he didn’t want

any of his children to leave home and break up the

family! Elizabeth’s biographer wrote that her father

“ruthlessly sought to obliterate every trace of his

daughter.” Elizabeth and Robert Browning moved

to Italy where they lived for five years. Believing

that, with the passing of time, her father’s heart

would soften, Elizabeth wrote hundreds of letters to

him. Almost every week she wrote telling him how

much she loved him and how she longed for a

reconciliation. He never answered one of those

hundreds of letters. Returning to England Elizabeth

sought, through intermediaries, to restore the

relationship. Her father steadfastly refused, deciding

instead, to carry his rancor and unreasonableness to

the grave.

Shortly after his daughter had arrived back in

England seeking to restore the relationship, Mr.

Barrett sent a package to his daughter. It contained

every letter she had written him during the five

years of her absence. The letters were all unopened,

their seals unbroken. What shocked Elizabeth

Browning was the fact that even the special letters

that she had sent in black-edged envelopes and

sealed in black wax, had been left intact. Surely, she

thought, her father would have been concerned,

thinking that the letters indicated that something

was wrong with her or the baby. Yet he had not

even bothered to open these letters.She resigned

herself to the inevitable end, and, in a disconsolate

mood, once again left England. Forsaken by her

father whom she loved was more than she could

bear. Forsaken.“It is one of the most haunting words

of human life and one of the most dreadful of

human experiences.This dreaded word recalls for

many an ocean of tears, heartache, bitter

disappointment, blighted hopes and unbearable

loneliness.”

The horrible pain of abandonment is something our

Savior willing endured for us. He was forsaken by

the fickle crowd who on Palm Sunday shouted,

“HOSANNA, HOSANNA, BLESSED BE THE

LORD.” But a short time later they cried,

“CRUCIFY HIM, CRUCIFY HIM.” He was

forsaken by the religious hierarchy. Stirring up the

people, these religious leaders had Jesus arrested

and condemned. He was forsaken by His disciples.

When He needed them the most they were nowhere

to be found.But all of this was as nothing compared

to what He experienced when, hanging from a cross,

He was forsaken by God.The unbearable pain of

that experience caused Him to cry out saying,

“MY GOD, MY GOD, WHY HAST THOU

FORSAKEN ME?”

“The most gut-wrenching cry of abandonment and

loneliness in history came not from a prisoner or a

widow or a patient. It came from a hill, from a

cross, from a Messiah. ‘MY GOD, MY GOD! He

screamed, ‘WHY DID YOU ABANDON ME?’”

In paying the just penalty of your sin, Christ was

forsaken by God. “Our finite minds will never

penetrate the full significance of these

heart-rendering words that fell from the lips of Jesus

as He died bearing the penalty of our sin. There is a

deep mystery in these words which no human can

fathom.”Nevertheless, they are not without their

meaning.These dying words of our Savior

communicate tremendous truths, truths which we

need to know if we are to live victoriously. His cry

from the cross speaks to us of the terrible penalty of

sin.

PENALTY OF SIN

“It was in the ‘forsaking’ that Jesus was bruised, put

to grief, smitten and afflicted of God for our

iniquities just as the prophet Isaiah prophesied.

During the desolate period when Jesus was bearing

‘the sins of many,’ his sinless soul was brought into

contact with the sins of a lost world and the awful

load crushed him. In some mysterious and

unexplainable way, ‘he was made sin for us.’”

1 Peter 2:24 declares that Christ “HIMSELF BORE

OUR SINS IN HIS BODY….SO THAT WE

MIGHT DIE TO SINS AND LIVE FOR

RIGHTEOUSNESS, BY HIS WOUNDS WE

HAVE BEEN HEALED.” “Sin in all its

hideousness took possession of His human soul and

He underwent the full consciousness of God’s wrath

upon sin. He endured for a season the sense of that

utter removal and banishment from God which is

the supreme penalty and result of sin. If hell is, in

part, eternal separation from God, then Jesus

certainly had a foretaste of such bitterness and

abandonment when He bore your sins and my sins.

As the Lamb of God, Jesus was provided to atone

for and remove sin, to reconcile us to God. Dying,

He presented to God an infinite atonement and now

we have redemption through His blood, even the

forgiveness of sins. Jesus endured forsakenness so

that we might be forgiven.”