“Forsaking the Faithful?” Matthew 27:45-50; Psalm 22

INTRODUCTION

Most of you enjoy the company of someone from time to time. You get pleasure out of spending time with others that are special to you. Maybe it is an afternoon with friends; or maybe you like dinner with your significant other. Then there are family gatherings that you particularly enjoy at the holidays or the summer reunion.

Emphasizing our interdependence, the 16th century Anglican priest and poet John Donne said:

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind....”

All of us enjoy fellowship, which is defined as “friendly association, especially with people who share one’s interests.” (Oxford Language Dictionary)

But have you ever experienced a break in fellowship? Things like an argument, an offense or a mistreatment of some sort can bring about a break in fellowship.

Jesus experienced a break in fellowship, not with his disciples or his mother or someone else close to Him. Rather, his was with His heavenly Father; something that had never occurred before. It is uttered in his words from the cross: “My God, My God; why have you forsaken Me?”

What can we make of these words of Jesus from the cross? We first learn...

Jesus experienced a break in fellowship with His Father, so that we could have fellowship with His Father.

Matthew 27:45–46 ESV

45 Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. 46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Jesus is quoting from Psalm 22. That is a Psalm of deliverance. Although it starts out with this question filled with anguish, it concludes with faith in the Lord and a confidence in His power and love. Written by King David, we are not sure of its occasion. W. Robert Godfrey states:

“David is expressing in the first place his own experience of feeling abandoned by God. Here is the most intense suffering God’s servant can know- not just that enemies surround him and that his body is in dreadful pain, but that he feels that God does not hear him and does not care about his suffering. And this is not just the experience of David. It is the experience of all God’s people in the face of terrible trouble.” (W. Robert Godfrey, “The Suffering and the Glory of Psalm 22,” www.ligonier.org)

But that is not where this Psalm ends. It also contains great faith and confidence that God will come through for Israel’s king who feels abandoned. But God will deliver him. Notice

Psalm 22:5 ESV

5 To you they cried and were rescued; in you they trusted and were not put to shame.

And in Psalm 22:11

Psalm 22:11 ESV

11 Be not far from me, for trouble is near, and there is none to help.

We can be encouraged that the Father did give Jesus what He needed in His dreadful hour and that He delivered Jesus at the appropriate time, namely by raising Him from the dead, which was also to our benefit.

Paul would explain that it is through repentance and faith in the One who gave Himself up for you, that now you can have peace with God.

Romans 5:1 ESV

1 Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Think about that for a moment. Jesus gave up His peace with His Father, so you could have peace with His Father. But let us never forget that Jesus’ break in fellowship with His Father was necessary, for in that time, the weight of your sin was upon Him. Next, for you and I to have fellowship with His Father, it was necessary that....

Jesus stood in your place and endured the punishment you deserved.

Isaiah 53 tells us

“... we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. ”

Arthur Pink states:

“During the thirty and three years the Son had been on earth, He enjoyed unbroken communion with the Father. Never a thought that was out of harmony with the Father's mind, never a volition but what originated in the Father's will, never a moment spent out of His conscious presence. What then must it have meant to be forsaken now by God! Ah, the hiding of God's face from Him was the most bitter ingredient of that cup which the Father had given the Redeemer to drink.” (Pink, The Seven Sayings of the Saviour from the Cross, 65)

During those horrible three hours, from noon until 3 p.m., Jesus lived under the darkest cloud. Everything that you and I deserved was thrust upon Him. He stood in your place.

Jesus never stopped being God, yet His fellowship with the Father was broken. At this point in history. The reason was to repair the broken relationship between our first parents and God. It was because of your sin and mine that fellowship was broke with God.

Speaking of His cries from the cross, the author of Hebrews says:

“In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence.” Hebrews 5:7.

Paul would explain that it was for us that Jesus suffered this heightened agony. Romans 5:7–8 (ESV)

For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Imagine if you had committed a crime that required the the ultimate penalty. You are guilty, and you’re waiting your sentence.

But in your darkest hour, alone in a jail cell awaiting sentencing, one comes to you and willingly volunteers to take your place, serve your sentence, so that you can go free: the innocent for the guilty.

Jesus did exactly that! All this was necessary if you and I were to ever be reconciled to the Holy God of the universe.

Arthur Pink states:

“God is Holy and therefore He will not look upon sin. God is just and therefore He judges sin wherever it is found. But God is love as well: God delights in mercy, and therefore infinite wisdom devised a way whereby justice might be satisfied and mercy left free to flow out to guilty sinners. This way was the way of substitution, the just suffering for the unjust.” (Pink, The Seven Sayings of the Saviour on the Cross, 77).

Chills come over me at that thought. I am humbled. And I remember the words that Jesus spoke in

John 15:13 ESV

13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.

What must your response be? Lastly...

Worship is a most fitting response to His grace and mercy.

Revelation 5:1 states:

1 Then I saw in the right hand of him who was seated on the throne a scroll written within and on the back, sealed with seven seals. 2 And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming with a loud voice, “Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?” 3 And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it, 4 and I began to weep loudly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it. 5 And one of the elders said to me, “Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.”

Jesus has paid the necessary price to open the scroll. He stands apart from all religious leaders and sages, who only claim to know the way. He is the way. And it is most fitting for us to worship Him as a result.

That is why there should be no lax or boring worship experience! We must sing boldly! Pray with all faith! Love and serve each other! And devote ourselves exclusively to our King.

It was for our shame that Jesus hung there.

Too often we come to worship expecting it to do something for us. We judge the music or the sermon based on if it does anything for us. In contrast, you and I must give ourselves to the worship of God and His Son! He is deserving!

CONCLUSION

As one commentator states:

“We don’t have an equivalent to the cross in our culture, because modern capital punishment doesn’t come close to being as sadistic. In his book, the Case for Easter, Lee Strobel describes the flogging and crucifixion as “a beating so barbarous that it shocks the conscience, and a form of capital punishment so depraved that it stands as wretched testimony to man’s inhumanity to man.” Just as we don’t have an equivalent to the pain of the cross, neither do we have one for the shame of the cross—to hang on display while a crowd gathers to mock and leer. The pain of the cross was compounded by the shame of the cross.”

(The Case for Easter, p. 12–13; Jim Wilson, 1000 Fresh Illustrations (WORDsearch, 2004)).