Holy Week (Friday) - ‘Forsaken'

Welcome back to our Holy Week study.

It's Good Friday, ironically named, the day that Jesus Christ is placed on a

cross, the hands of evil men.

Famously in Mark 15, 34, he cries out, at the ninth hour, Eloi,

Eloi, lama samachthani, translated from the Hebrew, my God, my God,

why have you forsaken me?

Up to this point, in our walking with Jesus, the crucifixion,

the betrayals, if you've read the Gospels this week, all of the things that

happened before he gets to this point, it's been a lot of focus on his physical sufferings.

Hours have now passed since the nails were driven home in his hands and his feet.

The crowds have jeered, and darkness has covered the land.

And suddenly, after a long silence, comes this cry. These words are a quotation from Psalm 22.

Mark actually translates directly from the Aramaic and Matthew from the Hebrew,

slightly different, but meaning the exact same thing.

They clearly want people to know the exact words that Jesus spoke here.

And at Jesus' lowest, it's important to note that his mind instinctively goes to the Psalms.

He borrows from Scripture words that express his anguish, not of his body, but of his soul.

Calvin writes, For some clarity before we go too deep,

there are certainly some negatives here, and forsakeness cannot mean anything positive,

but a couple things that it certainly doesn't mean.

It doesn't mean that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit was broken,

that the Trinity humanity was fractured.

God cannot cease to be who He is, triune God, Father, Son, and Spirit.

Neither does it mean that the Father ceases to love the Son, especially not now.

The Son was offering the greatest sacrifice to the Father that He had ever received.

It doesn't mean that the Holy Spirit has ceased to minister to the Son.

He had come down to Him at His baptism early in His ministry,

and He would be there until the end.

I think most notably, this isn't a cry of despair in the way that we would think about it.

Consider what He says, My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?

Jesus never loses sight of the fact that God is His God.

Even if he is on the cross, despised and rejected, betrayed,

lonely, nails through his hands and feet, crown of thorns on his head,

blood flowing from him, body broken, his cry is not,

you're not my God anymore, obviously.

It's my God.

What was true of Abraham is even truer of Jesus.

Against all hope, he in hope believed. as Paul talks about in Romans 4.18.

Yet, with all these qualifiers, and they are very important,

this was a real forsaking.

Jesus didn't merely feel forsaken. He was forsaken, and this not only by his

disciples and his family and the crowds that once yelled, Hosanna,

now yelling crucify him, but by God himself.

We're going to talk about this actually in my sermon on Sunday if you'll be

there, but it's important to note that it was the Father who had delivered him up to Judas.

It was the Father who had delivered him up to the Jews. It was the Father who

had delivered him up to Pilate, and it was the Father who delivered him to the cross.

And as he cries, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

That crowd has not stopped jeering him, and the demons had not stopped taunting

him, and the pain had not ceased.

No angel came to strengthen him. No redeemed sinner bowed to thank him.

No one, except for the thief on the cross, had any recollection of who he was.

It's interesting, too, when we read this in the original Hebrew,

he cries out in Aramaic and in Hebrew, but he doesn't use the words that we

often distribute to Father.

That word is Abba. Maybe you've heard that word before. It's a term of loving endearment.

Even in Gethsemane, where he was praying, he uses this word Abba.

But here he uses a new word, Eloi, or El.

That is, this is God Almighty, God Holy, God the righteous judge.

And Jesus, the man now, sits before El, Eloi, God.

Not now as his beloved son, but as the sin of the world. That is Jesus' identity on the cross.

It is not that he bears some vague relation to sinners.

No, he has become one of them. He is now numbered with the transgressors.

Indeed, he is all of them.

2 Corinthians 5.21 tells us he is sin He is condemned to bear sin's curse And

he has no cover Jesus prays in the garden to let this cup pass from me What is the cup?

The cup is God's wrath That is being poured out onto Jesus Not because sins

that he has committed But because of sins that he has taken upon himself Amen,

Public was the cry, but it was expressed in intense private anguish,

in tension between the sin-bearing Son and His Heavenly Father.

You may ask the question, well, why? Why the cry?

Is it a cry of protest? I don't believe so.

Jesus and the Father are one. He's come to do the Father's will.

He comes to the cross willingly.

He's not dragged there. he's not forced to be there?

Is it that he doesn't understand? I don't think so. Jesus is God in the flesh.

Possibly his human mind may have some trouble understanding everything that's

going on, but in his divinity he would know.

Never before had anything come between him and his Father, and now the sin of

the whole world has come between them.

He is caught in that dreadful throw.

It's not that Abba, Father, is not there. It's that He is there.

This is what we often get wrong about judgment and sin and hell.

You'll hear things say like, well, it's the absence of God. That's far from

the truth. The issue is that God is there.

Eloi is there. At the cross, God is there. He is the judge of all the earth,

Suddenly, as we're looking at this scene, it's over. The sacrifice is complete.

The curtain is torn, signifying mankind's entrance into the presence of God.

A way into the holiest place is opened for all.

Now Jesus finds expression in the words of another psalm, Psalm 31.5.

In the original, it had not contained the word Abba, but it's interesting Jesus

inserts it here. We read this in Luke 23.46.

Father, Abba, Father, Loving Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.

The cup has been drained on Jesus' head. He cries, Eloi, Eloi,

why have you forsaken me?

But as he takes his final breath, his cry is, Abba, Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.

This is the Jesus on the cross. This is the sin-bearing wrath of God.

God, this is the one who has come to take away the sins of the world.

Paul will say in Corinthians that he who knew no sin became sin so that we might

become the righteousness of God.

All of the righteousness that Jesus had lived his life with,

his perfect, God-fearing,

law-honoring life is given to his people,

is given to his children, and

all of our sins and all of our struggles and all of our transgressions,

all of our lying and cheating and coveting and lust and gossiping and every

awful thing that we have ever done or thought or considered is laid upon his head.

And he is the one now that cries out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

So that we can cry out, my God, my God, why have you loved me?

Why have you shown me grace? Why have you shown me mercy?

The answer to why is often not important because we don't know the mind of God.

But the answer to why is simple in the sense that why does God love you?

Because your sins have been paid for.

Jesus has bore your sins. He has experienced wrath.

He has experienced death. He has experienced everything that you and I rightly deserve for eternity.

So that we can graciously receive eternal life with God forever.

I pray that we consider that as we think about Good Friday, as we think about

what Jesus endured, that as He cries out, Why have you forsaken me?

We cry out, I can't believe that you have loved me in Christ.