Why have You Foresaken Me?
Notes
Transcript
Notes:
Notes:
Introduction:
7 Words of the Cross:
Two Only’s
Matthew and Mark: These are the ONLY words he speaks.
Only time Matthew records Jesus speaking in his native tongue. Bruner
“My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”
How do we understand these words?
This question leads to so many other questions:
Well, they sound worse than they really are.
Quoting Psalm 22 which ends with these words:
3 Yet you are holy,
enthroned on the praises of Israel.
4 In you our fathers trusted;
they trusted, and you delivered them.
5 To you they cried and were rescued;
in you they trusted and were not put to shame.
2. If Jesus had all of Psalm 22 in his mind, why didn’t he quote any other part of it?
Assumption into what Jesus was actually thinking on the cross.
Did Jesus have the whole Psalm in mind?
He doesn’t recite the whole Psalm! That should make us uncomfortable. We need to face THIS question, not the WHOLE of Psalm 22! What’s before us is a very tough question.
3. Other just don’t think what Jesus said was authentic:
Just too stark, dark, and out of place.
Was Jesus mistaken?
Was Jesus being metaphorical?
What kind of cry is it?
Despair?
Agony?
Torture?
What shall we say? What can we say with precision? Very little...
What can we say?
My God, My God:
Words of Trust
Words of Confession
ANOTHER ONLY: Only time in the Synoptics Jesus prays to the Father without calling him “Father.” France
Not a cry of anger, but of prayer!
Question: Why?
Trying to sort this out.
Why?
Some commentators suggest Jesus asks an authentic question:
“I’ve been so faithful.” Why me?
“I’ve been perfectly obedient!” Why me?
“I’ve followed every order!” Why me?
“I’ve conquered every temptation!” Why me?
Important about why:
It’s not an accusation?
Not: “YOU HAVE FORSAKEN ME!”
It’s a question. It’s what Anselm said, “Faith seeking understanding.”
Have you!
Reenforces that this is a prayer. A difficult prayer. A challenging prayer, but Jesus revers to the Father still in the 2nd person singular because he has a personal relationship with the Father.
Pronouns are important in this prayer:
“MY, MY”
“YOU”
“ME”
Forsaken:
Verbs carry the sentence, and this verb anchors this sentence to the depths...
To desert, to abandon, to forsake, to leave behind, to be left behind, I leave in the lurch.
Why?
Bruner: “I have been told that the closest experience to hell on earth is to be abandoned by someone you thought loved you. Divorce, desertion, rejection. Jesus knew this hell. “He descended into hell.”
Q. Why does the creed add,
“He descended to hell”?
A. To assure me during attacks of deepest dread and temptation
that Christ my Lord,
by suffering unspeakable anguish, pain, and terror of soul,
on the cross but also earlier, has delivered me from hellish anguish and torment.
Repeat: On the cross, Jesus delivered me from hellish anguish and torment
“What is hell but separation from God?”
Lev 16:22: The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to a solitary land; and he shall release the goat in the wilderness.
Isaiah 53: 4 “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.”
Isaiah 53:11 “Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.”
II Cor 5:21 “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
I Peter 2:24: and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed.
Gal 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 hanged on a tree”—”
Theologically loaded cry of dereliction:
“Cut off from favor and fellowship with the Father that had been his eternally, because he was breaking the sins of his people and therefore enduring God’s wrath.” ESVSBV
HE’S EXPERIENCING THE CURSE OF SIN AND EVIL. HE FIGHTING AGAINST THE DEVIL AND HIS ARMY OF DEMONS!
Let’s Now put it all together:
Put some inflection into it:
Screams it!
What it took to speak: Push off the nail that pierces his legs.
Opens up his vocal chords: My God, my God…
He screams it into the darkness! Where is this darkness coming from?
Screaming out of agony into the darkness, into the feeling of abandonment
Leave Uncomfortable
We have a because: Why have you forsaken me?
It’s a prayer to the Father, but our sin is the answer…
Amazing Love: “I’m forgiven, because you were forsaken.”
Leave Comforted
Embrace the mystery
Some of you suffer
Feelings of abandonment? Utterly and completely isolated from Humanity and the Trinity??
“It seems that in the working out of salvation for sinners the hitherto unbroken communion between the Father and the Son was mysteriously broken.” Morris
Can we embrace the Mystery of this moment?
Leon Morris; “The Anguish of Godforesakenness”
“If Jesus asked ‘why,’ let us all be extremely cautious in saying ‘because.’
NO, ABANDONMENT!
“The Father turns his back away.” Is that a theologically correct statement? Can you break apart the Trinity? Must the Fellowship be broken?
“It is better to face the words honestly and to accept the fact that this was part of the putting away of sin.” Leon Morris