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Text: Matthew 27:45-50
Theme: How do we understand this passage — that God the Father, for however brief the time — withdrew His presence from the son.
Jesus took upon himself the sins of the world, and God could not bear to watch.
Of all the hard sayings of Jesus, this one is perhaps the hardest to understand.
At the crucifixion, Jesus became what his cousin John had prophesied — Jesus, the unblemished, Lamb of God (1 Peter 1:19), slain from the foundation of the world (Rev.
13:8), became sin for us (1 Cor.
5:21), to redeem us from the curse of the law (Gal.
3:13).
We sang about it this morning ... How Deep the Father’s Love for Us.”
In the second half of the 1st stanza we sing, “How great the pain of searing loss; The Father turns His face away;
As wounds which mar the Chosen One; Bring many sons to glory.”
The Cross was the culmination of God’s Plan to redeem sinners.
It seems unimaginable that God would turn his back on His Son at such a crucial point in his life.
It just doesn’t line up theologically.
Did the Father really turn His face away from the Son, at the very moment of the Son’s greatest obedience?
The cry of Jesus from the cross from Matthew 27 is the opening line of Psalm 22.
While the Psalm opens with a cry of utter desolation, it is really an expression of faith and thanksgiving.
The deliverance of God, long awaited and even despaired of, comes at last.
This is not a cry of seeming defeat and abandonment, but an expression of faith that God has been with him the entire time.
“For he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, and he has not hidden his face from him, but has heard, when he cried to him.”
(Psalm 22:24, ESV).
But in the crucifixion, all the weight of our sin was laid on the sinless Son of God.
God’s judgmental wrath — a wrath that we deserve — was poured out on Jesus, and Jesus discovered, in an excruciating way, what it is like to be us.
We rejoice that his righteousness was imputed to us.
But we cannot begin to contemplate what it meant for all our sin to be imputed to him.
He who knew no sin now became sin for us.
We take our sin and sinfulness for granted.
Jesus had never known the weight of sin ... the sinfulness of sin ... the consequences of sin.
At the cross Jesus feels an alienated from the God, to the point where it seems that the Father has abandoned him.
But Psalm 22 is actually our Lord’s great confession of faith that this is not so.
The psalm falls into two easily discernible sections.
The first is Messiah’s description of the crucifixion (vv.
1–21a).
The second is Messiah’s exultation in the results of the cross.
I. JESUS’ GRIEVOUS CRUCIFIXION (22:1–21)
"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest.
Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel.
In you our fathers trusted; they trusted, and you delivered them.
To you they cried and were rescued; in you they trusted and were not put to shame."
(Psalm 22:1-5, ESV)
A. THE SOURCE OF JESUS’ TRAVAIL
1. Divinely from God (22:1–5) “My God, my God!
Why have you forsaken me?”
ILLUS.
William MacDonald, in his commentary on this Psalm, writes: “Approach this Psalm with the utmost solemnity and reverence, because you have probably never stood on holier ground before.
You have come to Golgotha where the Good Shepherd is giving His life for the sheep.
For three hours the earth has been enveloped in thick darkness.
Now “Immanuel’s orphaned cry” echoes through the universe: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
a. the Eternal Son who had always been the object of His Father’s delight now feels utterly abandoned by the Father
1) on two occasions — His baptism and His transfiguration — the heavenly voice had boomed “This is my beloved son ... listen to Him.”
2) now the voice is silent, and the presence of God in His life is absent
3) He knew it was coming; He knew it was part of the penalty that had to be paid for sinners; and yet when the abandonment actually comes it had to be heart-rending to the Son
b. the Perfect Man who unfailingly did the will of God feels the terrible desolation of being cut off from God
1) the opening utterance of the psalm furnished Jesus with the agonizing cry of his dying hour (Matt 27:45ff.)
2) the word "groaning" at the end of verse one is a strong word used of the shrieking of a person in intense pain
3) even in this awful moment, Jesus is fully aware of the Scriptures and what they say about His life, death, and coming resurrection
c. despite his suffering; Jesus remains confident in God the Father
1) He acknowledges the Father’s holiness and sovereignty (v. 3)
a) in these words, Jesus explains the reason for His forsakenness
b) the love of God demanded that sin’s wages be paid
c) God’s love provided what His holiness demanded
d) He sent His Son to die as a substitutionary sacrifice
2) He acknowledges the Father’s deliverance (vv.
4-5)
a) just as the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob trusted in God for their deliverance and God came through, so God the Son will trust God the Father
b) He has cried out, and He will be delivered
c) He has trusted in God the Father and he will not be disappointed
d. for our sake, God the Father crushed God the Son like a worm
"But I am a worm and not a man, ... ."
(Psalm 22:6, ESV)
1) this is one of the more fascinating verses in the Psalm, which, when you understand, speaks wonderfully of God’s redemptive work on our behalf
ILLUS.
The word worm in this passage is the Hebrew tolaat.
In Palestine and Syria, these worms were collected and crushed in a basin because their blood was used as a dye to create the brilliant scarlet vestments worn by the priests.
In fact the word scarlet in the Old Testament literally translates as the splendor of a worm.
2) in the Psalm, the Anointed One cries out, I am the tolaat and was an epitaph I think he wore proudly
a) First, the title reminds us of our Lord’s humiliation at the hands of men
b) to that epitaph he adds and not a man implying that he is a nobody in contrast to being a somebody as far as the Jewish authorities are concerned
"who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.
And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross."
(Philippians 2:6-8, ESV)
c) Second, the title reminds us that He had to be crushed in death, and His blood had to be poured out so that you and I might be clothed in glory
2. Physically from Man (vv.
22:6b–18)
a. the last half of verse six through verse eighteen refers to the travail that Jesus suffered at the hands of men
1) He is scorned and despised (22:6)
2) He is mocked and insulted (22:7–8)
ILLUS Do you hear the taunts of the Jewish religious elite in these verses as they sneer, He saved others.
Let him save himself and come down off the cross!
a) vv.
7-8 are virtually word-for-word what the jeering crowd said at Calvary
3) He is viciously attacked by his enemies (22:12–13, 16)
ILLUS.
The Prophet Amos compares the leaders of the Jewish nation to the cattle of Bashan, and castigates them for oppressing the poor and crushing the needy.
These bovines represent the chief priests and scribes who were responsible for the arrest and illegal trial of Jesus, and who handed Him over to Pilate and the Roman government for execution.
4) His life is poured out like water (22:14)
5) His bones are out of joint (22:14, 17)
6) His heart is melted like wax (22:14)
7) His strength is totally dried up (22:15)
8) His hands and feet are pierced (22:16)
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