"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

Matthew 27:39-49
₃₉ Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads ₄₀ and saying, "You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself ! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!" ₄₁ In the same way the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders mocked him. ₄₂ "He saved others," they said, "but he can't save himself ! He's the King of Israel! Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. ₄₃ He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him, for he said, 'I am the Son of God.' " ₄₄ In the same way the robbers who were crucified with him also heaped insults on him. ₄₅ From the sixth hour until the ninth hour darkness came over all the land. ₄₆ About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, ""Eloi, Eloi," "lama" "sabachthani?""--which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" ₄₇ When some of those standing there heard this, they said, "He's calling Elijah." ₄₈ Immediately one of them ran and got a sponge. He filled it with wine vinegar, put it on a stick, and offered it to Jesus to drink. ₄₉ The rest said, "Now leave him alone. Let's see if Elijah comes to save him."

This is going to hurt me a lot more than this is going to hurt you. It's an old saying that expresses making a difficult decision for someone you love. A lot of times these decisions are made in the best interest of that person, but they come at a cost to the punisher. A father buys tickets to a NBA game only to find that his son has been causing all sorts of trouble at school. He tries disciplining him, giving him more chores, grounding him, only to receive another note from his school. Finally, that game night, he says, "we're not going to that game." His son protests to which he says, "this is going to hurt me a lot more than this is going to hurt you." That father was looking forward to a night out with his son, he was looking forward to a break from the reality of bills and work, he was looking forward to seeing his favorite players take the court and hopefully even win.

Jesus had a similar experience on the cross. The Godhead that He was eternally part of loved humanity. God loved the people of this world, His creation. But they sinned and sinned again and they rebelled against Him continuously. The problem was God couldn't ignore it. God was a righteous judge and thus He had to judge fairly. The punishment of sin was eternal separation from God. You can see why this saddened Him. So God took on flesh and came to fulfill a promise that He would set it right.

It's no surprise that when Jesus came here He fell in love with His mother and adoptive father, John the Baptist and his disciples, His own disciples, Mary Magdalene, Mary, Martha and Lazarus, little children that ran to Him to be near. Jesus loved all of these people and you know what He saw? Death. He saw bodies and souls corrupted by sin. He saw willing spirits inside their hearts. He saw the Holy Spirit filling them with love, but most of all He saw the inevitable separation. He saw the weakness of the flesh, the temptations of the devil and the hopelessness they had.

God demanded life for sin so the Hebrews would bring offerings and burn them on the alter. Jesus came here specifically to be put on that alter where life was demanded. Jesus asked His Father if there were another way to save us, to please present it, but He knew, and God answered that sin demands life. Jesus on the cross in His last moments says God has forsaken Him. Why is this? Isaiah 53 starting at verse 4 tells us, " Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted."

Jesus took on our sin, this is not to say now that He was our sin, He was now sinning. Instead He felt the separation from God in our place. He felt the weeping and gnashing of teeth that was rightfully ours when those doors were closed on eternity. He felt the shame and the guilt so that we don't have to. A Christian once told me that we should repent of our sins, but not beat ourselves up over them as we've already been forgiven, to do otherwise would be like saying God's forgiveness isn't enough.

In fact Jesus did something that we should all do when we may feel abandoned. He turned to scripture. Psalm 22 says, "₁My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning? ₂O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, and am not silent. ₃Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One; you are the praise of Israel. ₄In you our fathers put their trust; they trusted and you delivered them. ₅They cried to you and were saved; in you they trusted and were not disappointed." When you take it in that context as well, you can see how Jesus, suffering our guilt, feels abandoned, and like the Psalmist, he declares His feelings, but also knows that God is true to His Word and that when your trust is placed in Him, He delivers.

Jesus endured a punishment for us. Watching Jesus crucified in our place is never a pleasant thought and I imagine seeing it in person was even less pleasant. But Jesus took on a pain much more troubling to us so that we would never have to. He experienced that separation so that we would never have to. Because of this, we can pray to Him without an intermediary, we die and go home to rest with Him, we are risen on the last day to be by His side and we will be with Him forever. How blessed we are, that there is never a point in our lives, nor will there ever be, that we will have any separation from our Heavenly friend.