Matthew 27: 45-50
Sermon preached at Barclay Church, Edinburgh by Rev D. Graham Leitch
11 May 2003

MY GOD MY GOD WHY HAST THOU FORSAKEN ME?

After a break of a fortnight we return this morning to an Easter theme - to Calvary and to what we can lean from Christ’s words from the cross - specifically his prayers. It’s interesting, by the way, to observe that in his sufferings (when He was nailed to the cross and hung in agony there):

TWO LESSONS FROM JESUS WORDS FROM THE CROSS
Firstly. Jesus spoke little - the Bible records seven words from the cross - but they are brief. In the presence of suffering SILENCE is sometimes the appropriate response.

I saw it in the Sick Kids sometimes - when death visited young families and grief was at its height and their pain beyond imagining. In such a situation it is generally unwise to rush in the with many words - it’s often better to say NOTHING. In the presence of suffering words are best used sparingly.

There is, as the Book of Ecclesiastes reminds us “a time to be silent” as well as “a time to speak.” In the place of suffering Jesus spoke little.

Secondly, in the place of suffering his words were addressed more often to God than to those around Him. Of His seven words from the Cross FOUR are prayers. This teaches us not to turn from God or curse him when troubles come but to seek Him then.

It is when we are under the greatest pressure that we need the greatest strength and GOD alone is its source!!

That’s preliminary, that’s “by the way” - but already you can see how much there is to learn from Jesus at the cross!! If you’re a Christian there’s nowhere in all the world where God can teach you more!!

MY GOD MY GOD WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME?
Three weeks ago we considered Jesus’ first prayer from the Cross - “Father, forgive them because they don’t know what they’re doing!”

Today we pick up the second prayer - the cry of His tortured heart. “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me!!” he prayed for the forgiveness of those who were nailing him to the cross - for those who scoffed and mocked and took pleasure in his sufferings. But now he has been on the cross for hours - a strange darkness (unnatural or supernatural)has fallen, blotting out the sun. (Matt 27:45)

The weight of the world’s sin is upon the shoulders of the Sinless One and in our stead he takes our punishment upon Himself!! And out of the strange darkness which veiled the sufferings of the Perfect Son came the heart rending, heaven piercing cry:

“My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me!!”

Did you notice how John records in the original language Jesus used the words - “Eli! Eli! Lama Sbachthani!” This is unusual - it’s as thought the words, that awful cry, burned their way unforgettable into his memory that not even the passing of the years could silence them:

“Eli! Eli! Lama Sabachthani!” - “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me!!”

This prayer confronts us with a mystery we can only dimly grasp - it may be puzzling but it’s also profound.

“Here you may look as into a vast abyss. And though you strain your eyes and gaze until sight fails you, you shall perceive no bottom - it is unfathomable.” C H Spurgeon

A part of the task of the preacher is to help his listeners to fathom the unfathomable. I can hardly hope to succeed where many of the greatest preachers in Scotland’s history confess to having failed, but together we can perhaps penetrate to the first glimmering of the light which lies at the heart of the three hour darkness culminating in Jesus’ cry.

“My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me!!”

One way of unpacking what this verse reveals of Jesus’ experience at Calvary and teaches us about our experience of life and God’s purposes is by focussing on its key words - emphasising different parts of it.
THE QUESTION “WHY?!!”
Notice to begin with that this word from the cross is a question and that at the heart of his cry is the word WHY?!:

“My God! My God! WHY have you forsaken me!!”

In his ministry his friends and enemies alike have asked Jesus WHY questions: The pharisees asking “Why do you allow your disciples to pick grain on the Sabbath day?” His disciples asking “Why does it say in the law and the commandments....?”

But now Jesus, in the deepest, darkest depths of his unimaginable sufferings on the cross asks the BIG question “My God, my God, WHY!....”

i) WHY ARE YOU LETTING ME SUFFER LIKE THIS?
Is He asking God “Why are you letting me suffer like this... why are you letting them treat me life this...why am I having to endure the indignity, the physical pain, the cruel suffering of the Cross?”

Perhaps! It’s certainly a question we ask - when we think of God as our Father and remember that God is love and then something goes awfully wrong - we ask WHY?!!

It’s perfectly natural when a nephew or niece is diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour or a friend dies in a horrific drink drive accident or some unspeakable crime of violence against a child takes place to ask WHY? What’s the point - why is God letting this happen - why are these people having to suffer so!!

It’s perfectly natural too, to ask WHY when the media confront us with memorable pictures of war and hate, of senseless atrocities, natural disaster or famine - WHY?!!

And it’s just as natural when misfortune or disaster, pain or suffering, visits us personally. Not just “Why?” but “Why me....?!!”

One of the lessons that comes to us from this darkest moment not only in the life but in the death of Jesus at Calvary is this - that if even the perfect Son of God was not spared suffering and pain in his life we can scarcely claim such immunity.

The fact that, at the cross, in the pain and sufferings of Jesus, the plan of God for our forgiveness and salvation was unfolding and the purpose of God was being enacted, is the proof that pain and suffering (mysterious though they often remain and that much harder to bear because of it) can stand within the circle of His providence and grace.

WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME?
When Jesus said “My God, my God WHY....?!!” he could have been asking “Why are you allowing me to go through this suffering.. the physical agonies of the cross..the indescribable pain?”

But a familiarity with Jesus’ conversation in his life and a closer examination the the prayer itself make this seem unlikely to me:

In his life and ministry Jesus showed a clear awareness of being appointed by God to bear the penalty of the world’s sin, to win our forgiveness and put us right with God:
“The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and give his life a ransom for many.”

“I am the good Shepherd...the Shepherd lays down his life for the Sheep.”

He exhibits a sense of compulsion with regard to his appointed role: “The Son of must suffer many things and be put to death...” (Mark 8:31) He knew he had a baptism to be baptised with and felt himself constrained until it was accomplished. Shortly before his arrest with the cross in sight he could say “The hour has come...” And filled with awful foreboding he prayed “Now is my souls troubled. And what shall I say, ‘Father save me from this hour....NO!!...for this purpose I have come to this hour..Father, glorify thy name.” (John 12:27-28)

No, Jesus travelled to Jerusalem on that last fateful journey knowing full well what awaited Him there.
A close look at Jesus prayer, too, reveals that it was not the physical sufferings of the cross that provoked this anguished cry. “Eli! Eli! Lama Sabachthani!” It was not the cross, the nails, the scoffing and pain - the physical sufferings of which He here complains. It is the sense that God has abandoned him, turned his back and forsaken him......

“My God, my God, why have you FORSAKEN me..”

THE MYSTERY OF THE GOD FORSAKEN SON
The word FORSAKEN draws us both deeper into the darkness of that hour and closer to its light!!

It was not the cross and the nails, the scoffing and the pain; it was not the physical sufferings of the cross which surprised him or caused his greatest distress in the strange darkness of the three hours. No! It is the LOSS of His God!!

It is not “Why has Peter denied me?” or “Why has Judas betrayed me?” or “Why have the disciples abandoned me?” All those he could bear! What cause the ultimate deepest and most grievous suffering of all was the sense that GOD had forsaken him:

“Eli! Eli! Lama Sabachthani!” - “My God, my God, why have you FORSAKEN me..”

THE CHRISTIAN’S TROUBLES
When troubles come to us in life - when bad things happen to good people - they are themselves hard to bear. No-one can cope with one calamity after another or handle multiplied trials with ease. When worry is added to worry and burden to burden, the weight never grows lighter!!

The Christian, of course, has his God. But it is precisely when we are most severely and, it often seems to us, unfairly afflicted that any felt sense of God’s presence is replaced by the feeling that God has deserted us, withdrawn his favour, that God’s no longer there!!

That can make the worst of troubles doubly terrifying! The warmth and tenderness of His love is suffocated by an icy coldness; the sense of his living presence evaporates and in its place a deathly silence - God just isn’t there any more for us!! To say it’s hell is not wide of the marks because what is hell but the absence of God!!

And so often when troubles come - injustices or sufferings - disappointments and distresses - that’s how we feel. God is DEAD to us (or so it seems) and we are DEAD to God. It is bad enough when troubles come - but when God appears to forsake us, turn his back, abandon us, the darkness is doubly dark!!

At Calvary this was what Jesus experienced - a sense of being cut off, abandoned by God!! This is a very strange and amazing thing -that in the mystery of the Divine Godhead God knows what its like to be FORSAKEN BY GOD.

The incarnation means that God is not a stranger to human griefs or sorrows - God even knows what the loss of God is like to the human heart!!

JESUS AND THE LOSS OF GOD
It wasn’t the physical suffering that were worst for Jesus at Calvary but this sense of the loss of God - the sense that God has forsaken him - this dark and incomprehensible ABSENCE of God!

If it is awful for us think how much more awful it must have been for Him. He had a closer and more intimate relation to God than any other. He alone in history could say “I am in the Father and the Father is in me” His relationship as the Son with the Father was so complete that he could even say “I and the Father are one.” When Jesus said that he wasn't just talking about the identity of his being with the father but about the closeness of his union with the Father.

But now at Calvary in place of the perfect union there was a complete divorce......if we emphasize the “you” and the “me” you get “My God! My God, why have YOU forsaken ME!” He was after all the father’s first and only begotten and best loved Son!


It was so much worse for him than it ever could be for us:
“we lose but drops when we lose our joyful experience of heavenly fellowship...but to our Lord Jesus Christ the sea was dried up.”

AN UNEXPECTED EXPERIENCE
Of much that would happen at Calvary Jesus was aware - “the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed....” but for both the sense and the fact of his abandonment by God there (an abandonment and loss that were necessary to our salvation) He seems unprepared:

Eli! Eli! Lama Sabachthani!”

It wasn’t what his knowledge of Scripture led him to imagine. His Bible spoke to him of God being a present helper at the worst as well as the best of times. Had not David sung of this - “even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will not fear, for you are with me....” Hence Jesus’ cry: “My God, my God, why have you FORSAKEN me..” It wasn’t what the Bible suggested.

And in John 16:32, it isn’t what He himself is anticipating:

“A time is coming and has come” Jesus told the disciples, speaking of his approaching death, “when you will be scattered each to his own home. You will leave me all alone.....yet I am NOT alone for my Father is with me....”

“I am NOT alone... for my Father is with me” What consolation and strength - courage to face the future” He found there!

There is a sense in which Jesus - in his human nature - was only able to face what lay ahead and meet his sufferings because of his confident anticipation that though everyone else might desert him he would not be alone - his Father would be with him. Yet now, in the enduring darkness - spiritual as well as physical - spiritual more than physical!! - He is cut off from God and all sense of the Father’s presence is gone.

LOSING THE SENSE OF GOD’S PRESENCE
Sometimes the Christian in his/her life loses a sense of God’s presence. What causes this - those reconciled to God (who have trusted Jesus Christ) are made and meant for friendship - a close and intimate relationship with God. But sometimes it vanished and God seems distant or dead - we feel MILES AWAY from him.

This can be caused by sin, and specifically by unconfessed sin - there was an old lady in my last congregation who was extremely deaf and she had one of those old hearing aids with the wire connecting the hearing aid to the ear-piece. She was distrustful of the whole thing and had only been perusaded by her daughter to get one. Finding the wire connecting the aid to the ear piece a perfect nuisance - it kept getting in the way she devised the prefect solution. She went to the cupboard, got out her sewing scissors and cut if off!!

That’s what happens when we sin - our living connection with God, the source of our temporal happiness and eternal safety - is severed!!

Sometimes it is not unconfessed sin which cuts us off from a sense of God’s presence but a failure of faith - refusing to believe that God is with us, beside us and for us, we lose any conscious sense of his nearness and kindness. Failing to trust his promise “I will NEVER leave you” - we lose any sense of his presence.

But when Jesus lost the sense of God’s presence at Calvary in the midst of that awful darkness its wasn’t unconfessed personal sin that was the cause. It couldn’t be because He was uniquely perfect and as the Bible records entirely “without sin.” Nor was it any failure of faith on his part - He refers to God doubly as “My God...”even in this his greatest test.

No his SENSE of forsakenness is rather a product of him identifying with our sins and bearing their penalty and punishment in his own perfect and divine person. This brings us back to the central question at the heart of Jesus’s second prayer from the cross: WHY!!
Why was it that Christ had to die? What was the nature of the divine necessity which both led and surrendered Him to the Cross of Calvary?

“My God, my God, WHY have you forsaken me..”
Why? Why have you let it happen? Why have you allowed it? Why have you decreed it from the first? Why is Christ “the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world?”

What is the reason for his death and what is its outcome? If in his human nature and in his mind humanly he was perplexed, dismayed and could find no answer - yet as the Divine Son he soon knew for in his next breath the anguished cry of dismay will be overtaken by the triumphant cry of joy that shook the earth and flooded heaven with joy - “It is finished!!”

Why did God forsake His son? The simple answer is that He did it for you and for me - He took upon Himself the curse of separation from God that by our forgiveness we might be joined to Him.
He endured divorce from Him that we may be, by faith, united to Him.

There could have been no vicarious suffering on the part of Christ for human guilt if he had continued to enjoy the full bright sunshine of His Father’s presence It was essential to His “becoming sin for us, though He knew no sin” - essential to His standing in the place of judgment and condemnation for us that he should be cut off from God. Hence:

“My God, my God, WHY have you forsaken me..”

There was no reason in Christ why the Father should forsake Him. He was perfect. His life was pure - entirely perfect. But God never acts without reason and since there were no reasons in the character of person of Jesus himself why his Father should forsake Him, we must look elsewhere.

The answer is to be found his role as the sin-bearer of the chosen and the Saviour of the world:

“Yet all the griefs He felt were ours,
Ours were the woes he bore;
Pains not his own His spotless soul
With bitter anguish tore.
We held Him as condemned of heaven,
An outcast from His God;
While for OUR sins He bled and died
That we may come to God.”

AMEN!