Tonight’s statement from the cross is perhaps the most haunting passage of scripture we will encounter in our series. Final words, eternal Impact. It comes at the ninth hour of the day, three o’clock on Friday afternoon for six hours. Jesus has hung at the cross. His body wracked with pain. And for three hours now the sky has gone completely dark. It’s asks if creation itself could no longer bear to witness what was happening, and then from the depths of the suffering, a cry from Jesus. That would echo throughout time. Join me as we read from Mark chapter 15 verses 29 through 36. Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, so you who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, come down from the cross and save yourself in the same way. The chief priest and the teachers of the law mocked him among themselves. He saved others. They said, but he can’t save himself. Let this Messiah, this King of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may see and believe those crucified with him also heaped insults on him. At noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, and at three in the afternoon, Jesus cried out in a loud voice, Eloy Eloy, Ani, which means my God, my God. Why have you forsaken me? When some of those standing near heard this, they said, listen, he’s calling for Elijah. Someone ran, filled a sponge with wine vinegar, put it on a staff and offered it to Jesus to drink. Now leave him alone. Let’s see if Elijah comes to take him down. He said, this is the gospel of our Lord. Praise Christ. Join me as we pray. Well, father, as we reach the midpoint of lint, we encounter a terrifying passage of scripture. It is so difficult for us to comprehend the weight of our sin and the pain that Jesus truly experienced on the cross sin. Now Father, the Holy Spirit. Be with us tonight to open our hearts and our ears to understand that behind this scripture that is so fearful, there is love that is given to us in the act of Christ. Help us to trust your word when we read that Christ has taken our place, comfort in our distress, and reassure us with your spirit. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. My God, my God. Why have you forsaken me? These words constitute the most heartwrenching cry in the history of humanity. The son of God had endured a perfect communion with the father from eternity past, and now he experiences something u utterly foreign to him.

Separation. In this moment, Jesus’s cry is the experience of divine abandonment. It’s the only time in the Gospels where Jesus addresses his Father as God rather than Father, pointing us to the profound disruption in their relationship. And in some ways, this passage is a deep mystery. And we can step back from that understanding that there may be a part of this that we cannot fully explain or understand that there are aspects of Christ suffering that remain beyond our comprehension, but we can understand what it means for us and how even in this darkest moment of human history, there is hope. But first we must deal with the reality of abandonment. You see, Jesus’s cry from the cross is not just a feeling of abandonment. It is not simply that Jesus felt distant from God, as we often do in our spiritual lives. Now, in this moment, Jesus truly experienced the horror of divine abandonment. The prophet Isaiah had foretold this in Isaiah 53, where he said, surely he has born our griefs and carried our sorrows. He was wounded for our transgressions. He was crushed for our inequities. You see, on the cross, Jesus was bearing the full and complete weight of our sin. Apostle Paul tells us that he who knew no sin became sin on our behalf. Peter writes in first Peter chapter two. He himself bore our sins on his body on the cross, and as the prophet Habak wrote in Habak one 13, God’s eyes are too, too pure to look upon evil. So in this moment when Christ has taken on our fullness of sin, the Father looks away from him. Imagine now for just a moment. The loneliness in this experience from eternity past that had been the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In a perfect communion, a relationship that in embodied perfect love, perfect harmony, perfect joy. And now in this moment, Jesus, as he bears our sin, has that communion interrupted. The one who had never known sin, knew what separation from the Father was like. And it’s important for us to remember this doesn’t come at the beginning of Jesus’ suffering, but this is right near the end after hours of physical torture being mocked and humiliated. After being abandoned by his followers. This abandonment by the father was the culmination of his suffering, the bitterest and hardest part of the cup that he had to drink. But even in this cry of abandonment, we find words of faith. Notice that Jesus says, my God, my God, even in this moment of abandonment, he maintains trust in the Father, a commitment to the promise that God had made to him. He does not disbelieve the promise of the Father by crying out God, but still echoes my God, my God.

The relationship is strained to the breaking point, but Jesus does not let go of the promise of the Father. So it’s important to understand where these words come from. You see, Jesus has taken his quote straight from Psalm 22 as we opened up the call to worship with tonight. You see these words are not spontaneous. This is a Psalm that the King David had written as he described the suffering that the Messiah would undertake. With complete accuracy. If we go back to Psalm 22 for just a moment, we read in the first two verses, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me from the words of my groaning? Oh my God, I cry by day. But you do not answer him by night, I find no rest. Yes, this psalm is recorded. In a moment of King David’s distress himself. Yet it goes on to describe the physical suffering that mirrors Christ’s crucifixion with uncanny and eerie precision. Verses 14 through 18 from the same Psalm, go like this. I am poured out like water and all my bones are outta joint. My heart is like wax. It is melted within my breast. My strength is dried up. Like a pot, sir. And my tongue sticks to my jaws. You lay me in the dust of death for dogs encompass me. A company of evil doers encircle me. They have pierced to my hands and my feet. I can count all my bones. They stare and they gloat over me. They divide my garments among them and my clothing. They cast lots. Psalm 22 was written centuries before this day of crucifixion. In fact, it was written centuries before crucifixion itself was invented. Yet in King David’s words, we find a passage that eerily describes Jesus’ experience on the cross, the dislocation of joints, the extreme thirst, the piercing of the hands and the feet. Even the Roman soldiers casting lots for his clothing yet, and probably most importantly is the fact that the Psalm does not end in despair. If we continue reading the Psalm 22, we find that it moves from abandonment to assurance, from suffering to salvation. Listen, here as we hear this D dramatic shift, I will tell of your name to my brothers. In the midst of my congregation, I will praise you for he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, and he has not hidden his face from him, but he has heard when he cried to him, all the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship before you.

You see the psalm? The words that Jesus begins quoting encompasses the entirety of God’s redemptive story that is carried out on the cross. The abandonment, the suffering, all would ultimately lead to victory and to our salvation. So the bigger question we must ask ourself is, what did Jesus accomplish while experiencing this abandonment? The why for what purpose? The answer in this is actually the heart of the gospel. You see on the cross, Jesus was taken upon himself both the entirety of our sin and the consequences of our sin. Remember earlier I read from Habak chapter one, verse 13, he says that God’s eyes are too pure to look upon evil. And Isaiah writes in 59, 2, your inequities have made a separation between you and your God and your sins have hidden his face from you. By its very nature, sins separates us from God. It rep rup ruptures relationships. It breaks communion. You see what Jesus was experiencing in that moment on the cross was the full weight of that separation, not for his own sin ’cause he had no sin. But for ours, for yours, for mine, for King David’s, for Moses, he was experiencing in this terrible moment, the exact punishment that you and I would experience for eternity if left in our sins. Separation from the source of all goodness, all love and all life. Paul echoes this in Galatians three 13 when he says that Christ has re redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. The curse of sin is full and complete separation from God, and yet Jesus took upon himself that curse in this moment of abandonment. Jesus experienced all the punishment that is due you and me, but yet never reaches us. This is the incomprehensible depth of God’s love for those who believe in Christ. Jesus was willing to die to experience the horror of divine abandonment so that we would never have to. Yeah, he was forsaken also, that you and I can hear the words. Your sins are forgiven. He cried. Why? So we would never have to. What seems on the surface, like God’s abandonment of his son was actually God’s provision for our salvation. The cross reveals the complete justice of God. And the entirety of his love for us justice and that sin must be punished. Yet love in that God himself bears the punishment in our place.

This isn’t an easy place for us to go, guys. This is a heavy ness that exists and it’s perfect for us to experience this in lint as we look back towards Easter so that when we get to Easter, we experience the fullness of that day. We understand the hope that we should have in our lives. The first thing we can take from this is the fact that Jesus understands our suffering. In Hebrews four 15, scripture tells us that we have a high priest who is unable, who is eight. We have a high priest who is able to sympathize with our weaknesses. One who has in every respect been tempted as we are yet was without sin. Jesus has experienced the worst pain imaginable, not just physical torture, although that was bad, but a spiritual desolation that we do not truly know. When we feel abandoned, when we cry out, why Jesus understands He’s been there. He’s uttered that cry. Second. This means that no experience of our suffering or abandonment that we will face is beyond God’s redemptive purposes and what seems like the worst possible moment in the history of humanity. God is working through what would be considered by most ugliness and hatred to bring about our salvation. And this is a reminder to us today that God can work through our darkest moments to accomplish his purposes. Just a couple weeks ago, we talked about the thief on the cross and how no one has passed redemption at any point in their life. And I’ll remind you tonight what Paul wrote to the young preacher in Timothy when he writes to him and in one Timothy two, four, that God wants all people to be saved. And to come to the knowledge of the truth. Think about Joseph in the Old Testament. He was sold into slavery by his brothers falsely accused and imprisoned in Egypt. He had every reason to feel abandoned and isolated, alone, left by God. It years later in Genesis 50 20, he tells his brothers, you intended to harm me. But God intended it for good to accomplish what is being done for the saving of many lives. God was working through even that abandonment to bring about salvation. Think of Job who lost everything. Who cried out to a seemingly silent God? Yet through his suffering job came to know God more intimately.

Later on job would write this. I have heard of you by the hearing of ear, but now my eyes see you. Sometimes. It’s in the moments of these greatest abandonment that we experience God most profoundly. Third Jesus’ crier tonight reminds us. That the feelings of abandonment that we feel in our own life are not the final word. Remember what Jesus quoted in Psalm 22, the Psalm that begins in desolation and ends in deliverance. Remarking included in his passage, Jesus’ cry of abandonment. But don’t forget what John wrote in John 1930. John has Jesus’s final words from the cross being it is finished, not a cry of defeat or desolation, but a cry of accomplishment. Luke records Jesus’s final words, these, this way. Father, into your hands. I commit my spirit, hear how he’s moved back from my God to my father. The communion was reestablished. The separation was terrible, but it was temporary. Easter Sunday was coming. So when we encounter feelings of separation or forsaken us, when we let the world and Satan attack us and beat us down to the point where we think God has forsaken us, remember these feelings, however terrible they are, and however real they are, do not always reflect reality. Remember these words from Hebrews 13, five. I will never leave you nor forsake you. Our feelings may fluctuate, but God’s commitment to us is unwavering. Our passage tonight. It’s probably the most troubling paradox in Christian faith. We confront the idea that God, a loving father would abandon his son, and we ask, how can this be a loving act to some of us, it’ll be a mystery that we will never fully comprehend. Yet, in this darkest moment of cosmic history shines the brightest light of divine love, the horror of our sin, the punishment do us taken by God, whose love is immeasurable. It reveals to us the savior who is willing to experience hell so that we might live in eternity, in heaven, who is willing to be forsaken so that we would be embraced. And so I want to remind you tonight and this Lenton journey, wherever you’re at, whatever loss you may have feeling, whatever pain, whatever sense of divine absence you might be dealing with right now, remember the cross.

Remember that feeling forsaken is not the same as being forsaken. Jesus was forsaken so that you would not be. Remember that Sunday is coming. Remember that the God who seemed absent from Calvary was actually working his greatest miracle there. I hope so that you could hear these words in Christ. Your sins have been forgiven. And you know that the price has been paid and you are set free. Let us pray. Lord Jesus, thank you for enduring the cross. The weight of humanity rested upon your shoulder in more ways than we truly understand. You were despised and shamed, mock, and yet you stayed upon that cross. For the joy that was set before you, the joy of bringing many sons and daughters to glory, not just the ones here tonight, they hear your message, but those throughout time and eternity who have turned to you in faith. Thank you for experiencing the abandonment so that I could experience acceptance. Jesus, forgive me when I feel abandoned and I think you’ve left my side and remind me of this story so that I know that you never will In Jesus’ name. Amen.