Lenten Message: Forsaken

 

Why Have You Forsaken Me?

 

Today is the first Sunday of the season in the Church calendar called ‘Lent.’ Christians observe this time as one in which we focus our thoughts on Jesus’ sacrifice of Himself as our substitutionary atonement for our sins.

During Lent, as I said last week, many Christians take opportunity to reflect more particularly on questions such as “Who am I? Why am I here on planet earth? Why did Jesus die for me? How can I grow in my love and devotion to my Savior?”

 

As we move into the season of Lent which will end on March 31 with Resurrection Sunday, I thought it a good idea to focus our attention during the next few weeks on the last words Jesus uttered on the cross, just hours before His death.

 

The ‘Last Words’ of people who die is a subject of interest to many people who actually document those words of the dying. Some – believe it or not – some people are actually flippant as they near the last breath. For example, it’s reported that comedian W.C. Fields, when asked why he was reading the Bible on his deathbed, responded: “I’m looking for loopholes.”

 

Margaret Sanger, infamous eugenicist and racist, who popularized the murder of multiple millions of babies through Planned Parenthood died saying: “A party! Let’s have a party.”

 

Then there were those atheists who were not at all flippant about their impending eternal destiny. They were instead terrorized by what they sensed was about to happen to them.

 

But then there are those who saw a different destiny from their deathbeds. For example, St. Teresa of Ávila’s last words were these: “O my Lord and my Spouse, the hour that I have longed for has come. It is time for us to meet one another.”

 

Dwight L. Moody, founder of the Moody Bible Institute, said on his deathbed: “Can this be death? Why it is better than living! Earth is receding, heaven is opening. This is my coronation day.”

 

The last words a person speaks when they know they’re dying give us important insights into their hearts. Some take their last breaths fully blind and deaf to the undiluted terror that awaits them only moments later. Others are fully conscious of the terror that awaits them. And others – others who know Jesus as their Lord and Savior – others take their last breaths with joyous expectation of meeting Him face to face.

 

The last words of Jesus also give us insight – insight into His heart as He awaited His own physical death. I mention them only briefly now, and they are NOT in order of when He said them. Here are the seven statements:

 

1. “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”

2. "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." 

3. “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

4. "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!"

5. "Woman, behold, your son!" Then he said to the disciple, "Behold, your mother!"

6. "I thirst.”

7. "It is finished."

 

So, let’s begin our examination of his Seven Last Statements as He hung dying on that cross. Todays’ message centers on one of His statements. I take that text from Mark’s gospel: (Mark 15:33-34) “When the sixth hour came, darkness fell over the whole land until the ninth hour. At the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” which is translated, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”

 

Did you ever wonder what His enemies thought when Jesus cried out to God, “Why have You forsaken Me?” I imagine they thought: “Good! He’s just getting his comeuppance. He was a vicious blasphemer, and now He will spend eternity in condemnation.”

 

They didn’t know it at the time, but they were fulfilling what proved to be a prophecy written a few decades earlier, before Jesus was even born. It’s found in the intertestamental book of Wisdom: (Wisdom 2:12-20) Let us lie in wait for the righteous one, because he is annoying to us; He opposes our actions, reproaches us for transgressions of the law and charges us with violations of our training. He professes to have knowledge of God and styles himself a child of the Lord . . . Let us see whether his words be true; let us find out what will happen to him in the end. For if the righteous one is the son of God, God will help him and deliver him from the hand of his foes. With violence and torture let us put him to the test that we may have proof of his gentleness and try his patience. Let us condemn him to a shameful death; for according to his own words, God will take care of him.”

Of course, it was not only Christ’s first century critics who pointed to His words on the cross – “Why have You forsaken Me” to try to prove He was a blasphemer. Critics for two millennia have tried to do likewise.

 

So, His enemies were thrilled. But what of His friends? What did they think when he cried out those words? Maybe they were wrapped in a mass of confusion, wondering why the Father was letting such agonizing terror ravage His Son. Maybe they thought they had been wrong about Him. Isn’t that what the two disciples on the road to Emmaus thought? When Jesus approached them – they didn’t at first know it was the Lord – and He asked what they’d been talking about, they said to Him: (Luke 24:21) "But we were hoping that it was He who was going to redeem Israel.”

 

“My God, My God, why have your forsaken Me?”

I also wonder how many in the crowd – even among the Sanhedrin – how many recognized Jesus was quoting from the first verse of Psalm 22. Were there not any who recognized that Jesus was pointing them to that Messianic Psalm which spoke of a suffering Messiah?

 

Here is only part of that Psalm: (Psalm 22:1,7,14-18) “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me? . . All who see me sneer at me; They separate with the lip, they wag the head, saying, “Commit yourself to the Lord; let Him deliver him; Let Him rescue him, because He delights in him.” . . . I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; My heart is like wax; It is melted within me. My strength is dried up like a potsherd, And my tongue cleaves to my jaws . . . .For dogs have surrounded me; A band of evildoers has encompassed me; They pierced my hands and my feet. I can count all my bones. They look, they stare at me; They divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots . . ..”

 

“My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Notice the repetition of “My God,” repeated for the same reason you and I repeat things in our prayers – for emphasis.

 

It’s hard – I’ll say it is IMPOSSIBLE – for us to conceive the agony we’d experience to know God had forsaken us. How could we even minimally understand the heart-rending anguish we’d experience to hear our Creator say those horrifyingly dreadful words which He WILL say to many on that day: (Matthew 25:41) ‘Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels; A place where there will be ETERNAL weeping and gnashing of teeth (See for example, Matthew 8:12; 13:42, 50; 24:51)

That sense of unimaginable rejection by the Father is exactly what Jesus experienced on that cross – experienced not because of His own sins, but because of your sins. And my sins.

 

As we’ve seen many times as we’ve studied the Scriptures together, Jesus received the FULL, and complete wrath of God when He BECAME our sin (see 2 Corinthians 5:20). When the Father – out of His overabundant love for you AND His full justice against sin – the Father made his sinless son BECOME our sin. And in that moment God turned His back on His beloved Son who had now become SIN. At that moment, for the first time in ETERNITY, the Son lost total fellowship His Father.

I still remember how it felt to be rejected by my father. I was four when he left. Some of you know this story. I was sitting on a black couch in our one-bedroom apartment when Mom told me that daddy wasn’t coming home anymore. I got up and went to his closet to find his wallet. I wanted to hide it and force him to stay.

 

My sister and I rarely saw him during our childhood years. But when I was 18, I asked Mom to arrange a meeting with him at his parents’ apartment. They lived only a few blocks away.

 

When I saw him for the first time in more than a decade and a half, I asked him why he left me and Andrea. And without even a moment’s hesitation, he said, “Because I wanted to.”

 

More than half a century later, I still remember it.

I know what it’s like to be rejected by a parent. And some of you also know the feeling of being rejected by a parent, or in some cases, by a spouse, or a child.

 

But what must it have been like for the Son of God to be rejected by His Father with whom He had lived in eternity past in such an inconceivably  intimate relationship. But – and here it is again – because the father rejected the Jesus, He will never reject those who call Jesus their Savior, Lord, King, and sacrificial atonement.

 

Think of what that means for us who were – as Scripture defines us – ‘children of wrath’ before Jesus saved us. Think what it means for us who sometimes can’t often go more than 15 minutes without committing a sin in thought, or in word, or in action. Think what it means that because of Jesus, God has wiped away forever all our sins for which we have repented and from which we have turned.

 

Like the Etch-A-Sketch and Magic Slate illustration I used a few weeks ago to demonstrate the glorious truth that God chooses to forget everything we’ve ever done.

 

Yes, we have heard that story a thousand times, and if we live long enough, you’ll hear it another thousand times from me – why, because we need to keep hearing it again and again because we forget that truth again and again.

 

PLEASE! Don’t let anyone ever seduce you into believing that after you die, you still have to pay some penalty for your sins. That is a demonic lie that spits in the bloody face of Jesus.

 

What I have difficulty understanding is WHY so many there in the dining room, and so many of our families and friends reject God's message of hope and eternal forgiveness.

 

I have a friend a few years older than I. He has a bad heart and has had several cardiac procedures to correct his dysrhythmias. Of course, his obvious mortality worries him – but apparently not that much.

 

I’ve tried a few times in the last month or so to talk to him about eternal things, but he’s made it clear he doesn’t want to hear about it. I have another friend, one I’ve known from childhood, who’s already had prostate cancer, and a recent heart attack. He also is uninterested in talking about death and eternity.

 

Many years ago, as a home Bible study which Nancy and I attended wound to a close for the evening, a young mother ran out to her car for a package. She left her two-year-old daughter with us in the living room. But when Berea saw Mommy leave, her face froze with panic. She raced as quickly as her little legs could carry her and stretched in vain for the doorknob. Her screams brimmed with terror, as if Mommy would never to return from the other side of the door.

One of the women lifted Berea into her arms and tried to calm her. But it was no use. The toddler wanted no one but Mommy. And mommy was gone.

When Berea’s mother returned a few moments later, she lifted her into her arms, stroked her back and spoke softly into her ear. Almost immediately, the baby quieted down. All was well. Mommy had returned.

 

But what will it be like for my two friends when they too-late realize they are FOREVER on the other side of the door? When they fully comprehend the truth of which Job spoke: (Job 27:8 - “For what is the hope of the godless when he is cut off, when God requires his life?”

 

What will it be like for my friends and for those in the dining room when THEY say – knowing they are without hope for a second chance: “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?”

 

Well, it’s time to bring this message to a close. And to do that, I’d like to ask each of us – myself included – “What will WE do today with God's Son?” Indeed, what will we do EVERY day with God's Son?

 

It’s not enough to simply say ‘Jesus is my Lord.’ It’s not enough to go down to an altar once and confess our sins. We have to daily live the life of Christ. Here is Luke 9:23-24 in which Jesus said to everyone following Him: “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it.”

 

Listen! We’d better be careful that we do not end up at the Judgment like those Jesus warned us about in Luke 13:24-28 “Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. Once the head of the house gets up and shuts the door, and you begin to stand outside and knock on the door, saying, ‘Lord, open up to us!’ then He will answer and say to you, ‘I do not know where you are from.’ Then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in Your presence, and You taught in our streets’; and He will say, ‘I tell you, I do not know where you are from; Depart from Me, all you evildoers.’ In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth . . ..”

 

No, it’s not enough to go down to an altar one time in your life. We had better pay attention to the biblical message of ongoing holiness and righteousness and faithfulness and truth and repentance. We’d better pay attention to what the Holy Spirit tells us through the words of Scripture.

 

How ought we to live in light of what Jesus has done for us? That’s easy: Grateful. Obedient. Faithful. Honest. Humble. Kind. Gentle. And quick to repent when the Holy Spirit tells us we have done or said or thought the wrong thing.

 

We are dust, and to dust we will each return. But our souls will live forever – either with Christ or on the wrong side of the door, forever separated from the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

 

“My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Jesus spoke those words so you and I will never have to say them. You are dust. I am dust. That is why we each must every day repent and believe the gospel.