Sermons
The Anguish of the Cross
Intro: Surprise! Terry called Friday and asked if I could present today’s sermon because he is sick. Of course I will. We are all family and we shuold be ready to help each other out.
I have had 3 ideas working in my brain-case for a sermon for the pastoral Sunday coming the end of this month. However, while I was reading scripture Friday evening, a particular scripture jumped out at me, and that is what we will be discussing this morning.
That scripture? Matthew 27:45-46
“Now from the 6th hour darkness fell upon all the land until the 9th hour and about the 9th hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli Eli, Lama Sabachthani” That is My God, My God, Why hast Thou Forsaken Me?
Those terrifying words occur in 2 gospels – Matt. 27:46 and Mark 15:34.
About the 9th hour Jesus cried out with a “Loud” voice. We should find this absolutely amazing! How did He muster up the strength to call out with a loud voice. Hanging from spikes for so long a time. His back raw from the whip and the sliding against jagged wood. A crown of thorns pressed into his head. His face beat almost beyond recognition.
Now, one very important fact to remember is that these words are the exact first words of Psalm 22! And that is important because Jesus seems to have known that this Psalm was in some way about Him, because at least 3 other parts of this Psalm are quoted in the story. We have V 1-2
V 7 – “All who see Me mock Me; they make mouths at Me; they wag their heads. And those are the exact words. “They wag their heads”, quoted in Matthew 27:39. And those who passed by, derided Him, wagging their heads.”
V 16 of the Psalm “They have pierced My hands and feet.”
V 18 “They divide My garments among them, and for My clothing they cast lots.”
So the words, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me” are part of this Psalm that contains, as it were, a script for Jesus’ last hours. No doubt a hidden mystery until Jesus uttered them from the cross.
Not only the Psalms, but even in Isaiah we can discover Jesus’ destiny!
Isaiah tells us that, “He bore our griefs and carried our sorrows, that He was wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities. That the chastisement of our peace was laid upon Him; that by His stripes we are healed [Isa. 53:4-5]
He redeemed us from the curse of the Law, being made a curse for us [Gal.3:13]
He was made a sin offering and He died in our place on our account, that He might bring us near to God. It was this which caused His intense suffering
It was the manifestation of God’s hatred of sin that Jesus experienced in that terrible hour.
It was suffering endured by Jesus that was due to us! And suffering, by which alone we can be saved from eternal death.
Jesus said, ”I am the way, the truth, the life, no one comes to the father but by Me”
My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken Me”
Why did Jesus use these words? – We will be considering a 3 part answer to that question this morning.
First: This was a real “forsakenness. That is why. “My God, My God why have You forsaken me?” means He really did!
Jesus is bearing our sin. He bore our judgment. The judgment was to have God the Father pour out His wrath on us, and instead, He pours it out on Jesus. And that of necessity, involved abandonment.
He gave Him up to suffer the weight of all the sins of all His people and the judgment for those sins.
Consider this: To be forsaken by God is the cry of the damned, and Jesus was damned for us!
So He used these words because there was a real forsakenness. That is the first reason.
Second: This is not a question looking for an answer, but a way of expressing the horrors of abandonment.
A couple of reasons for this thinking:
Jesus knew ahead of time what He was doing and what would happen to Him and why He was doing it. His father had sent Him for this very reason!
[John 18:4] – “Then Jesus knowing all that would happen to Him, came forward and said to them, Whom do you seek?”
He gave Himself up. So He knew what was about to happen and why.
And another reason is the moment was one of agony, not seeking of an answer.
Third: The fact that He is not asking a question so much as expressing a horror. The words are a direct quotation from Psalm 22. These words were part of His messianic calling. Let us not forget [John 1:1] – “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God”
The word that we have is the very essence of Jesus. He drew the strength to speak from deep within Himself. So naturally He would quote the word.
He endured the cross for the joy set before Him. The “why” is not a request for an answer, It is a real cry of spiritual desolation with words that were second nature because His whole life was scripted by God.
The 22nd Psalm was His life. Crying out in agony with these words of this Psalm shoes that, as horrible as it is, it was all going according to God the Father’s plan. All of it was a fulfillment of scripture. Even the worst of it was the fulfillment of scripture. And that moment was probably the worst moment in the history of the world. And it was scripture filled and fulfilled!
In this unique situation in time, Jesus was crying out in anguish because of the separation He now experienced from His Heavenly Father.
This was the first and only time in all eternity that this separation took place. The Father turned His back on Jesus because of the repulsiveness of sin.
Yet Jesus endured that abandonment for our sakes.
Habakkuk declared of God; “Thine eyes are too pure to approve evil, and Thou canst not look on wickedness with favor” [Hab. 1:13]
God turned His back when Jesus was on the cross because He could not look upon sin. Just as Jesus loudly lamented, My God My God why has Thou forsaken Me
Jesus did not die as a martyr to a cause or simply as an innocent man wrongly accused and condemned, but because Jesus died as a substitute sacrifice for the sins of the world, the righteous heavenly Father had to judge Him fully according to that sin!
Consider this:
The Father forsook the Son because the Son took upon Himself OUR INIQUITIES {Isa. 53:5]
Jesus was delivered up because of our transgression [Rom. 4:25]
He died for our sins according to scripture [1 Cor. 15:3]
He who knew no sin became sin on our behalf [2 Cor. 5:21]
He became a curse for us [Gal.3:13]
He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross [1 Pet. 2:24]
He died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust [1 Pet.3:18]
He became the propitiation for our sins [1 John 4:10]
Jesus the Christ not only bore our sin but actually became sin on our behalf. He did all this at the Father’s command because God loved us before we loved Him, even as sinners! He gave us a way to be freed of sin.
Jesus came to teach us perfectly about God and to be a perfect example of God’s holiness and righteousness.
However, as He Himself declared, the supreme reason for His coming to earth was not to teach or to be an example but to give His life a ransome for many [matt. 20;28]
The mystery of the separation is far too deep for most of us to fully grasp. But God has revealed the basic truth of it for us to accept and to understand to the limit of our ability. Nowhere in scripture can we behold the reality of Jesus’ sacrificial death and anguish of His separation from His Father more clearly and penetrating than His suffering on the cross because of sin.
In the midst of being willingly engulfed in our sins and the sins of all people of all time, He withered in anguish not from the lacerations on His back or the thorns that still pierced His head or the nails that held Him to the cross,,,,,but from the incomparable painful loss of fellowship with His heavenly Father that His becoming sin for us had brought.
So,,He said these words, one, because there was a real forsakenness for our sake. Two, He was expressing desolation, not asking for an answer. And three, He was amazingly fulfilling scripture in the horror of it all and witnessing to the perfection of the plan of salvation.
