(Manuscript Sermon) The Forsaken King

How can we appreciate the day, if we have no experience night? How can we properly appreciate health, if we have not experienced disease? How can we rightly appreciate Christ’s Resurrection, if we have not rightly understood the experience of Christ’s death?

The words of Jesus’ cry from the cross are simply glanced over, as if they are meaningless or of little importance. These words are part of a story that seems so distant from our emotions, but how can we increase in praise of the Resurrection next week, if we don’t more deeply understand the significance of Jesus Christ’s crucifixion and suffering? If we make his suffering to be little, is it any surprise that we will make his Resurrection seem little? Oh, yes! We may say things or act in certain ways externally; but should we not feel the weight of Christ’s death, if we will sense a greater love for His Resurrection?

So, it is with this goal - a goal a sensing a greater weight in our hearts of the suffering and death of Christ - that I approach this passage. This passage expresses to us the exclamation of Jesus Christ with the intention of impacting our hearts about Who Jesus is through vividly portraying his suffering and death. So, feel the weight of this King, who is forsaken! Sense the emptiness that is felt. Hear the abandonment of Jesus’ words! Allow these words to convince your more fully of Jesus’. Allow these words to give you a greater appreciation for his finished work - a finished work that results in your never being forsaken! Indeed, Jesus Christ experienced desolation so that his people would never be forsaken.

How can we rejoice

  In the words of Elizabeth Browning:

Yea, once Immanuel’s orphaned cry his universe hath shaken.

It went up single, echoless, “My God, I am forsaken!”

It went up from the Holy’s lips amid his lost creation

That, of the lost, no son should use those words of desolation.1

1 Carson, D. A. (1984). Matthew. In F. E. Gaebelein (Ed.), The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Matthew, Mark, Luke (Vol. 8, p. 579). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House.

The gospel of Matthew observes Jesus as the one in whom all of God’s purposes are fulfilled. This theme of fulfillment is found in a couple of different ways. First, you find that he uses the phrase “That it might be fulfilled” or something referencing a prophet’s word. Secondly, Matthew observes God’s purposes fulfilled in the identities given to Jesus Christ throughout the book. The major identities are that of: Christ, Son of Man, King, Son of God.

It is not only Matthew who observes Jesus Christ and manifests Jesus in these ways, but as we enter the period of time when Jesus would suffer, die, and be raised again, we are made keenly aware that many people within the narrative accounts are observing Jesus. Notice the scriptures leading up to our passage and through our passage as:

Pilate's question of observation in

There are accusatory observations by witnesses in

Pilate observes Jesus’ silence and marvels in

Pilate observes Jesus as the target of envy in

Pilate’s wife observes Jesus’ as a just man in

Pilate personally observes Jesus as a just man in

Soldiers jokingly observe Jesus as King of the Jews in

Soldiers observe Jesus festively from the foot of the cross in

Witnesses sit down and observe Jesus crucified in

Thieves observe Jesus with themselves in ,

Self-righteous people observe Jesus in

Religious leaders observe Jesus in

Creation observes Jesus as darkness comes in

Of all those who were either present or involved in the trial, scourging, and crucifixion of Jesus Christ there was only One Person’s presence that mattered most and now He is forsaken by this presence - the presence of His Father. Do you sense the weight of his cry? Do you feel the agony of his loss? Do you hurt when you hear those words? Hear, feel, and know the excruciating loss of this forsaken King!

How should we consider this forsaken King? By looking at the nature of Jesus’ cry we will identify four realities about this forsaken King. The first of these three will speak to his identity, while the last will speak to the function of his abandonment: (1) He is forsaken royalty, (2) He is forsaken humanity, (3) He is forsaken deity, (4) He is forsaken as the ransom (price of release).

(1) Jesus is forsaken as royalty - and

The nature of Jesus’ cry is in view of this name that he is the “King of the Jews”. He looks nothing like a King as He hangs upon the cross. In quoting , Jesus is speaking the words of another King of the Jews - namely King David. This is yet another marvelous connection that Matthew makes for his audience. In both David’s trouble and in Jesus’ trouble, note “My God” is the phrase that is used showing that there is still trust in God. This phrase is a good lesson for us that in the midst of trouble, God is still trustworthy. Jesus’ cry of abandonment shows that his trust is still in HIS God.

For him [Matthew] Jesus is the true king: in 2:2 he presents him as the real king of the Jews (in contrast with Herod), and in the genealogy of 1:1–17 Jesus’ royal ancestry is emphasized. In 20:21 the disciples look forward to Jesus’ ‘kingdom’, and in 21:4–5 Matthew points out explicitly how Jesus’ entry to Jerusalem fulfils Zechariah’s prophecy of the coming of ‘your king’. 1

1 France, R. T. (1985). Matthew: an introduction and commentary (Vol. 1, p. 48). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

Jesus is forsaken as royalty. This should cause us to have a greater sense of the depth, the deprecation, the debauchery that Jesus experiences. Though a King, He suffered as a criminal. The King was forsaken.

(2) Jesus is forsaken as Humanity -

(2) Jesus is forsaken as humanity -

The nature of Jesus cry is painful and exclamatory. He is suffering! He is desperate! This desperation and suffering connects Jesus in a very organic way with the desperation of because it shows a human connection. The human connection can be seen on the surface as that of feeling infirmities. Consider how . This is an important truth for us to remember that the LORD is personal and intimate — in the sense that He fully understands our suffering.

Secondly, Jesus being forsaken as humanity must also make cause us to remember that Jesus is suffering abandonment as a penalty for sin — sin that is not his own but the sin of humanity. When the first Adam sinned, there was an immediate experience of alienation from the presence of God. Adam and Eve were banned from the Garden of God. In a very real sense, Jesus is suffering an exile from the presence of God for the sins of all of mankind. confirms Jesus’ is the hilasmos “sin-offering” for the world.

Thirdly, there is a much more human connection that must be considered, and that is the quotation of is not a mere recitation of a scripture but it is the recitation of King David who is the human lineage of Jesus Christ. Thus, now considering the human lineage of Jesus and the kingly nature of Jesus we can see that Jesus is the fulfillment of the David Covenant - a promise that the LORD gave to David that assured his throne.

A concluding thought on the nature of Jesus being forsaken: These are the words of Someone who knew the intimacy of the Father like no other human being. . The closest thing I could imagine is those who have spent a life together and suddenly there is a change of status and one person is gone. The difference is that God & Jesus have spent eternity past together, and now there is a sense of alienation. The degree of despair could not be greater.

Not surprisingly, then, Christian theology developed the belief that at this moment Christ bore the sins of all humanity, spiritually separating him from his Heavenly Father

1 Blomberg, C. (1992). Matthew (Vol. 22, p. 419). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

In consideration of Jesus being forsaken as a human, this king suffers as the perfect man for mankind, and he does so as the promised Messiah. This should cause to have a greater sense of the pain, the punishment, the payment that Jesus Christ is making.

(3) Jesus is also forsaken as deity - and

The nature of Jesus’ cry is somewhat strange if he really is the perfect man, and if he is really the “King of the Jews.” Consider the actual question that Jesus quotation asks.

Why did Jesus ask God why? Did he not know why he himself would sense the abandonment of God? The abandonment of the Father must have been presumed as Jesus spoke so prolifically about his impending death and Resurrection. Was this a moment of lethargic, painful ignorance? This cannot be. If anyone understood the nature of God and the nature of the law, sin, and the consequences, it must have been Jesus. His understanding was perfect.

If Jesus is potentially this ignorant, is he God enough to die for our sins? If Jesus is God enough to pay for our sins, could he be this ignorant? The reality is that this quotation, “My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?” makes us to ask some really important questions about Jesus’ Person. Did Jesus stop being God at this moment? If so, then He could not be the payment for our sins. Historically, there were groups who foolishly fell to one side of the tension or the other. Today, there are Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormans, and Muslims who have differing views on the person of Jesus; but how does this statement actually show us that Jesus still is God?

This quotation presumes that Jesus wants, needs, and rightly deserves the presence of God. While there is a mysteriousness that we do not fully comprehend, it is not that Jesus ceased to be God, but that he experienced fully the humanness and consequences of fallen humanness - consequences that were not brought upon him unwittingly but consequences willingly drunk by Him. His suffering of the consequences of sin had to be Him taking it on and not it merely happening to him like it happens to all other humans. Thus, even his suffering is distinct because, in this sense, he had a choice, while all other men do not. Thus, Jesus becoming sin for us is distinct from men being sinners. Only GOD could willingly do this. Thus, the fact that Jesus is fully God allows him to be fully human and to fully become sin as a Substitute.

...this is the ‘cup’ which he has willingly accepted from his Father’s hand1

1 France, R. T. (1985). Matthew: an introduction and commentary (Vol. 1, p. 404). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

It may be illustrated by either being hit by a car, with no alternative whether through ignorance or inability versus being hit by the car because you jumped in front of it purposely to save the life of another individual. In one case there, there really is no choice. In the other, there is knowledge and choice.

Jesus is forsaken as the King. Jesus is forsaken as the perfect human. Jesus is forsaken as God. This should cause us to have a greater sense of the agony, the affliction, the anguish of Jesus Christ. While these three truths about the nature of Jesus’ cry are about his identity, I want to conclude by drawing our attention to an aspect of this cry that is not merely about His identity but about his work — his function.

Conclusion:

(4) Jesus is forsaken as the ransom -

In this cry we come to understand that Jesus Christ is abandoned, and we have to ask not merely WHO IS THIS PERSON THAT IS ABANDONED, but - having understood that HE is forsaken - we have to ask the question, “Why is he forsaken?” Jesus had actually told his disciples that he had come to be a ransom (). This is a term that means the price of release. By price, we are obviously talking about the reality that Jesus is the sacrificial payment for the release of others. declares the same truth.

How then does this particular cry from the cross point to the function or work of Jesus Christ as the ransom. Here we see Jesus Christ bound to a cross, bound by the the anguish of abandonment, bound to suffering of excruciating pain, bound to a desperate claim of dependency. But why? He is bound so that others might go free. This sacrificial abandonment of Jesus Christ is part of the full wrath of God experienced by Jesus — a vicarious experience that allows us to have access to God’s never-forsaking presence. God’s never-ending presence cost Jesus the presence of His Father (in part). Jesus is forsaken as a ransom to release us from the penalty of being separated from the Father forever.

Timothy 2:6 gives

Do you sense the weight of this cry? “My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?” How can we truly appreciate the Resurrection, if we’ve not taken time to deepen our understanding of Christ’s abandonment? The King was forsaken.

Applications:

(1) Is Jesus truly your King?

(2)

(2) Is your heart gripped by the abandonment of Jesus Christ?

(3) Are you daily contenting yourself with Jesus?

As we prepare for Resurrection Sunday, let’s remember the cost paid by this forsaken King.