FORSAKEN

FORSAKEN Matthew 27:45-56 With grateful acknowledgement of these sources of direction and inspiration: the Holy Spirit; the Word of God; Jack Cottrell, What the Bible Says About God the Redeemer; Max Lucado, He Chose the Nails; Chuck Swindoll, The Darkness and the Dawn; Philip Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew April 6, 2003 Given by: Pastor Rich Bersett [Index of Past Messages] Back in January, actor/producer Mel Gibson was a guest on Bill O'Reilly's show, The O'Reilly Factor. He was being interviewed about the movie he has produced on the last hours of Christ's life. Oddly, the movie, which will be released next year, is done in Latin, Aramaic and Hebrew, but not in English. During the course of the interview he said, "It's time to get back to a basic message, the message that was given. At this time, the world has gone nuts, I think. Christ spoke of faith, hope, love, and forgiveness. And these are things I think we need to be reminded of again. He forgave as he was tortured and killed. And we could do with a little of that behavior." I sincerely hope that the film goes beyond this simple, moralistic teaching-that Jesus was a tremendous teacher who forgave, so we should try to be that way, too. I hope that, through the artistic skills, the millions spent making such a film and in spite of the language difficulties, the film says loud and clear what Jesus really did on the cross. He opened heaven to all people by paying their sin-debt on the cross. In the process of that redeeming, substitutionary death, Jesus faced some horrors that almost defy description. Perhaps the most horrible thing Jesus faced was what is taught in our text this morning. Beyond the physical suffering, beyond the tortuous death, even beyond the extreme pain of bearing the sins of the whole world, Jesus faced an even more terrible experience; he was forsaken. "From the sixth hour until the ninth hour darkness came over all the land." (Matthew 27:45) Chuck Swindoll described this scene this way: "Nature bowed in sympathy as its Creator was put to death. It was as though the light dimmed across the universe as the darkness of death descended upon the earth." Darkness-- a dramatic omen that enveloped the whole area and broadcast an ominous warning that what was about to happen at Golgotha was infinitely more than the death of a man wrongly accused. The darkness covered "all the land" to dramatize how huge and spiritually threatening was this thing that was about to climax. Charlotte and I went to the grocery Friday at about dinnertime. As we drove I noticed the thick dark clouds gathering just to the west. A true prophet, I said, "This is going to be nasty!" After we'd paid we carried our four bags to the exit door and there we encountered what you also saw when the storm hit. The hail was coming down like thick and steady, along with the gusting wind, the heavy rain and the lightning. I love storms. I suggested we go outside to watch and "experience" the storm. We huddled beneath the overhang and marveled at the awesome power of God being demonstrated before us. But what was most notable to me was how dark it was. Then we heard the crackle-you know that sharp snapping sound that lightning emits when the fury of heaven's electricity has just found its ground. I turned to the right just in time to see an awesome lightning bolt strike an electrical transformer. Boom! What a sound! What a sight! A huge ball of fire erupted at the top of that pole that must have been 20 feet in diameter. That day, in Palestine, God was sending a message with that noontime darkness-People, get ready; something BIG is coming down. It is going to be a massive spiritual event. I don't send darkness at noon just everyday. Something is about to occur that has never at any other time ever occurred. Jesus knew it. The feeling was enveloping Him, like quicksand. It was already choking the life out of Him. For three hours the sensation grew, and His heart experienced the fear and the dread of it-more than any man had ever known. And He knew in those terrible hours why He had prayed with such intensity in the Garden. It wasn't so much the physical pain, not even the pain of betrayal and ridicule. No, it was what He was encountering now-this cold, hellish dread. Finally at three o'clock, it overcame Him. It was as if a hideous pack of demons had been pursuing Him for three hours and had now caught Him. The full force of the worst that could happen to the Son of God hit Him hard. Verse 46: "About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, 'ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTANI?'-which means, "MY GOD, MY GOD, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME?'" You'll forgive the melodrama. We need that once in awhile. Dorothy Sayers once wrote, "It is curious that people who are filled with horrified indignation whenever a cat kills a sparrow can hear the story of the killing of God told Sunday after Sunday and not experience any shock at all." (quoted by Chuck Swindoll in The Darkness and the Dawn, preface) Forsaken. I was with a friend not long ago and he was telling about a time when he had gotten lost in a place that was, in his terms, "God-forsaken." I've thought about how loosely we've all used that term-God-forsaken. Have you ever been forsaken? Oh, I don't mean "forgotten" or "offended" like when someone forgot to send you a birthday card or didn't invite you to their wedding. I mean intentionally shunned, ignored, abandoned. I remember the days when I left a former fellowship of churches to begin this non-denominational church we know as Metro-East Christian Fellowship. I'm wrong when I say that I left that fellowship-I didn't intend to leave at all. I thought I was "extending" the fellowship. A whole series of stories and exaggerations grew up around this move of ours, and, to my emotional shock, they were being believed by people that I knew and loved. Brothers in ministry I had known and shared deep relationship with for years abruptly stopped all contact. My advances were met with no more than common courtesy, and sometimes less than that. It's a lonely and difficult place-the place of forsakenness. When friends leave you and those you trusted would always be there betray that trust. You're stood up on a date. A significant promise is broken. A spouse walks out on you. You discover a friend has slandered you. Multiply the worst of these feelings by a hundred million, and you begin to sense what Jesus felt on the day that He was abandoned by His Father. He voluntarily submitted to the assignment to leave heaven. He underwent the unfathomable transition of becoming human, fully human, and being born a poor child in obscurity. He was obedient to the Father's will in everything for 33 years of arduous earthly existence. He had wrestled with the decision to face this act of ultimate sacrifice and had once again submitted to the Father's will. He did it all; He did it without complaint; He did it in perfect obedience. Now He is forsaken by His Father. Jesus had known all along it was coming. He knew that taking the sins of the world on Himself would mean coming under His Father's righteous judgment. Now the hardest moment of His life-when the transaction is being made. He is in these moments making atonement for sin. 2 Corinthians 5:211 explains it this way: "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." For the first time in eternity, Jesus, the Son of God, is separated from Father God. While our puny minds wonder How can God be separated from God? the Bible does not even attempt to explain it. We have just this stark account of the painful cry of the forsaken one, Jesus. In every other instance when Jesus prays He uses the term "Father". [webmasters note: I counted 71 references in the Gospels where Jesus says my Father] But here it says He cries out, "My God, My God!" The close fellowship He always had with the Father was severed. There is a distance, even alienation. The cry of Jesus says that the Father has "forsaken" Him. And he has. Listen, don't ever think that, because Jesus was divine that somehow He escaped the full force of the pain of this experience. What Jesus, the man, went through that day, Jesus, the Son of God, also experienced. Hebrews 5:8 - "Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered". This separation was extremely painful. We know that what Jesus says here are a quotation of Psalm 22:1. But He didn't just dutifully quote this verse that He had learned as a boy in Sabbath School. Psalm 22:1 wasn't written so Jesus could later recite it, proving He was the Messiah fulfilling prophecy. No, Psalm 22:1 was written because God knew that one day Jesus would cry out these words in pain. Seeing that in advance, the Holy spirit moved on David to write the words our of his own current pain. Some are afraid of the idea that the Son of God might actually die. "How can this be? God can't die!" so they try to deny any concept of God suffering. But, if you remove God's suffering, you have removed the gospel. Others have suggested preposterous ideas like the "swoon" theory which suggests that Jesus didn't really die, He just passed out and looked like He died and He revived in the cool surroundings of the tomb. A woman who attended a rather liberal church once wrote to J. Vernon McGee: "Our preacher said that on Easter Jesus just swooned on the cross and that the disciples nursed him back to health. What do you think?" McGee replied, "Dear Sister, beat your preacher with a leather whip for thirty-nine heavy strokes. Nail him to a cross. Hang him in the sun for six hours Run a spear through his heart. Embalm him. Put him in an airless tomb for three days. Then see what happens." Let me suggest that the pain was experienced not only by Jesus, both as human and divine, but also by the Father. From the moment the decision was made in the sovereign plan of God that He would redeem mankind through self-sacrifice, it was a painful choice. Remember, the scripture says, "God so loved the world that he gave His Son…" (John 3:16) Bruce Theilemann, in his teaching "The Cry of Mystery" says, "In the National Gallery of Art in London there's a picture of the Crucifixion that is so dark that when you first look at it, you can't see anything. But if you stand and ponder it, and if you do not permit your gaze to falter, eventually you will see in the darkness a very dim figure of the crucified Christ. If you look longer and do not allow your attention to be diverted, you then begin to discern behind the figure of Christ the presence of God the Father, whose hands are holding up his Son, and on his face is a look of unimaginable grief. There, in those five hours, no matter what the depths to which he went, Jesus knew his Father was with him. The Trinity--Father, Son and Holy Spirit--suffering together. That's a mystery. I cannot explain it. But it is true. The real substance of what Jesus cried out was His question, "Why have you forsaken me?" [webmasters note: Matthew 27:46] I believe that is an important question for us to bring to the scriptures. Why did the Father forsake the Son? 1. Because He is Holy The holiness of God means He is totally and forever "separate from sin". The scriptures teach that He cannot and will not even look on sin. So, when Jesus took our sin on Himself, when the Father laid on the Son "the iniquity of us all", the holy Father could no longer have fellowship with His Son. The full weight of our sin and guilt was borne all alone by Christ, separated from Father God. 2. Because the Payment for Sin is Death God had established the law of justice way back in the book of Leviticus (17:11) and it was ratified by Hebrews 9:22 - "Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness." In His holiness God rightfully demands that sin be paid for. God is not like our judicial system, where murderers who are given life are out of jail in 20 years, where the same man who drives drunk and kills a person gets out inside of two years, gets arrested for drunk driving again, gets a slap on the hand, and then kills yet another person while driving under the influence of alcohol. God's justice gets carried out. "The soul that sins-it will die." (Ezekiel 18:4, 20) 3. Because He Loves Us God's justice demands that sin be paid by the penalty of death. Yet God is not only holy; He is also loving, and does not want us to perish (2 Peter 3:9). It is a true dilemma for a just and loving God. But He worked out a plan that would satisfy His justice and His loving nature simultaneously. "God presented him [Christ] as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. . . . He did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just AND the one who justifies the man who has faith in Jesus." (Romans 3:25-26) Conclusion Shoulders hunched, the man plods through life, straining with every step to carry the great burden to his back. It has been his nigh-and-day companion. Not once has he known relief from its merciless weight. The man's name is Christian, the central character in John Bunyan's classic allegory The Pilgrim's Progress. In one moving scene from the book Christian finds the path to salvation. Up the hill he staggers until he reaches the peak. There he sees a wooden cross and, just below it, an empty sepulcher. As he nears the cross, a miracle happens. The straps binding the massive weight to his shoulders loosen, and his load tumbles away into the sepulcher's waiting mouth, never to be seen again. A delicious feeling of lightness buoys Christian's body, and joyous tears of relief stream down his face. Three Shining Ones then approach him. The first announces, "Thy sins be forgiven thee;" the second strips away his rags and dresses him in splendid clothes; the third hands him a sealed scroll, which he is to present upon entrance to the Celestial City. Overwhelmed by his new freedom, Christian sings: Thus far did I come laden with my sin, Nor could aught ease the grief that I was in, Till I came hither. What a place is this! Must here be the beginning of my bliss? Must here the burden fall off from my back? Must here the strings that bound it to me crack? Blest Cross! Blest Sepulcher! Blest, rather, be The Man that there was put to shame for me! In this brief scene, Bunyan has eloquently dramatized the message that we are all pilgrims, encumbered by a crushing load of sin. When we stumble to the cross, God releases our burdens, burying them forever in Christ's own grave. And the reason it can be so is only because Jesus was willing to be "forsaken" so we could be saved.   [Back to Top]