March 16, 2025
Forsaken for Me
Matthew 27:45-46
Do you just ever stop and thank God for all the little pleasures He blesses us with? The laughter of a baby, the smell of your favorite meal cooking in the kitchen, or the sunsets here in New Mexico? I want to take a moment this morning and thank God for those little things that can bring us so much joy. The reason I wanted to start by thanking God and focusing on His blessings is that we are going to talk about some very difficult things this morning. It’s been said that it’s easier to talk about difficult things when it’s delivered as a bad news sandwich — good news followed by bad news, followed by good news again. Therefore as we start talking about some more serious and painful topics, just remember this is a sandwich and more good news is coming.
While God has blessed us with many wonderful things that we should be continually thankful for, this world is broken because of sin. Therefore we cannot expect everything we experience here to be good. Some difficult things come during life and while we should not dwell on them, to ignore them is ridiculous. We all experience brokenness in our lives in many ways. We need to talk about those things and understand how we are to deal with them by looking to the truth of God’s Word and how He has told us to deal with them. Among the things that affect us in this world, it’s arguable that one of the most painful is rejection. Psychologists tell us that rejection is a painful experience because of how it affects our brains. The first thing that happens when we experience rejection is that the cortical and subcortical parts of the brain are activated. These are the same parts of the brain that are activated when someone who is fighting addiction goes through withdrawals. This stage of rejection will not only cause mental anguish, but it will cause physical anguish as well in many ways. This by itself is bad enough, but your brain is not finished processing rejection yet. Once you go through the first stage of rejection, your Basal Ganglion begins to be activated. That's the part of your brain that processes grief. Studies tell us that over 50% of people who are experiencing grief associated with rejection are diagnosed with depression due to the rejection. Not only are you experiencing withdrawal symptoms, but you are also processing grief as well and all of us do that in different ways and process it in different time frames. Your brain is still not done yet. It then becomes desperate and illogical as it starts to misfire in the frontal lobe. Therefore it’s easy to see why rejection is such a horrible thing to experience. The severity of your response to rejection will vary based on the type of rejection you are experiencing. A salesman will have a very different response to a customer saying no to a sales pitch versus someone being rejected by someone they loved. The reason I wanted to speak about the pain of rejection is I wanted to help us start to understand another of Jesus’ sayings on the cross. It’s the only saying of Jesus that is recorded in both the Gospel according to Matthew and the Gospel according to Mark. However, I want to focus on the account in the Gospel of Matthew because it’s there that we see this saying is framed by rejection. Jesus was prophesied in Isaiah 53:3 to be the Man of sorrows, someone who was despised and rejected by mankind, and in the events surrounding the cross, we see just that. He was rejected by His inner circle as they were not there to support Him in His greatest hour of need (Matthew 26:36–45). The rest of His friends abandoned Him once He was arrested (Matthew 26:56). The religious leaders who should have cheered Him were saying that He was worthy of death. They spit on Him and struck Him with their fist (Matthew 26:66-67) and His closest friend Peter denied even knowing Him three times when times got very tough (Matthew 26:69-74). Despite all this rejection that Jesus had to endure at the hands of men, it was nothing compared to what seemed to happen on the cross when Jesus cried out, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?”. To understand what was happening and why Jesus cried out in this way, we need to understand the context in which this loud cry was made.
The Darkness of the Day - Matthew 27:45
From noon until three in the afternoon darkness came over all the land.
These three hours of darkness were not unexpected. It was prophesied in Amos 8:9-10 which says, “In that day,” declares the Sovereign Lord, “I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight... I will make that time like mourning for an only son and the end of it like a bitter day.” This was not just a cloudy day that hid the sun for a time, nor could it be a solar eclipse that caused the darkness. This wasn’t even a possibility because the Passover celebration was held during a full moon and it’s impossible to have an eclipse during a full moon. This darkness was undeniably a supernatural event that could only be brought about by God, and this isn’t the first time we have seen supernatural darkness come over the land. In the book of Exodus, after Moses is called to lead the children of Israel out of Egypt, God uses darkness as part of His judgment upon Egypt when He supernaturally made it dark for three days. The darkness in Exodus was said to be a darkness that could be felt and the darkness that started at noon around Golgotha had to have that same feeling. The horrors of the cross were slowly being realized by those in attendance as they became quieter and quieter, but now the darkness was adding to the intensity of the event they were observing. For those in attendance, there should have been doubts that this was more than a common crucifixion, this was no doubt something greater. What exactly was happening here? Many authors throughout history have tried to describe this darkness. Some said this darkness was a creation sympathizing with its creator. Others have said that the sun did not want to add its burden on Jesus during this time so it left, and some have said even the sun had to flee because it could not bear the injustice that was happening as the innocent Jesus was hung dying on the cross. Most of these are just a poetic attempt to describe a very real event that was taking place at that time. If we go back to the book of Exodus, we will see that the darkness preceded the Passover judgment where God killed the firstborn of all those whose homes were not covered in the blood of a lamb. Just like the judgment upon Egypt, the darkness of the cross also precedes the sacrifice of the Passover lamb. The darkness during those hours would forever link God's judgment of sin with the cross of Jesus Christ.
Jesus Forsaken - Matthew 27:46
About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”)
The darkness was present for about three hours before Jesus uttered the phrase that was recorded here in Matthew. Matthew recorded it in His native tongue which was Aramaic. Jesus is seemingly crying out to the Father; why have you forsaken me? why have you rejected me? why have you abandoned me? This is a very hard saying for us to understand if we just read it on its own. However, when we find a hard teaching, we must use Scripture to interpret Scripture, and when we do, we see what is happening here and what caused Jesus to loudly cry out to the Father. Before we look at why this cry was made, I want us to understand what this cry wasn’t. This was not a declaration that the Trinity had become fractured as many false teachers and false religions have suggested. The Bible is very clear that there is only ONE God (Deuteronomy 6:4, Isaiah 44:6, Isaiah 45:5-6, Galatians 3:20, etc.). God has existed for all eternity as three, co-equal and co-eternal persons — the Father, The Son, and the Holy Spirit (Isaiah 5:6, Matthew 3:16-17, Matthew 28:19, etc.). God Himself declares that He is unchangeable through the Prophet in Malachi 3:6, so this is not Jesus declaring that He has been somehow removed from the Trinity. How can we understand such a hard passage? As we said, we must interpret Scripture with Scripture, and we do so by looking at the other Scriptures that point to this moment. These words that Jesus spoke was not merely a shout of anguish (although this moment must have been filled with unimaginable pain), but it was a quote from the opening words of Psalms 22. Jesus was not just reciting Scripture to bring Himself comfort during the final moments of His life. Jesus was triumphantly declaring He had come to fulfill the prophecy that was given by the Psalmist some 900 years before the cross. That’s not the only prophecy we can look at to help us understand what is happening as Jesus loudly cried out from the cross. In the prophecy in Isaiah 53 we referred to earlier, we see more evidence of what is happening here. Verse 5 tells us that He was pierced because of transgressions, and He was crushed because of the sins and punishment that was upon Him. The latter part of Verse 6 tells us that the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. The latter part of Verse 8 tells us that because of the transgressions of men He was being punished. Verse 12 tells us that He bore the sins of many. However, it’s not just Old Testament prophecies that help us understand what happened at this moment. The writers of the New Testament declared through the Holy Spirit what happened as well. Peter tells us in 1 Peter 2:24 that “He himself bore our sins” in his body on the cross …”. Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 5:21 that “God made Him (Jesus) who had no sin to be sin …”. Jesus Himself even spoke of this moment. This was the moment that Jesus spoke of when, after two of His disciples asked for a place of honor at His right and left hand, He asked them if they were able to drink from the cup of suffering from which He was about to drink. This moment was also the cup of suffering that Jesus asked the Father to remove from Him in the Garden of Gethsemane. Based on what we see in Scripture, we can understand what was going on here. While we are not given the exact details of the transaction that was occurring at this moment, we know that this was the moment that Jesus bore upon Himself the sins of the world. It was in that moment that the perfect justice of God was seen as God poured out His wrath upon Jesus as He carried those sins. As referenced in Romans 1:18, this was the wrath of God poured out on all ungodliness and wickedness that was now placed upon Jesus. The innocent Jesus was being punished in ways we could never imagine.
Jesus was forsaken so we wouldn’t be.
Remember at the first of this sermon, I said this sermon was going to be a bad news sandwich? There is good news that comes out of the most horrific event in history. You see when I quoted the verses about what was happening on the cross as He bore our sin, I didn’t quote the entirety of the verses. You see Psalms 22 starts with this same cry, but the psalm doesn’t just stay focused on abandonment, instead, it shifts miraculously and ends in victory. Isaiah 53 tells us that He did this for OUR sin. This punishment would bring US peace. By His wounds, WE would be healed, and upon the cross. He was making intercessions for our sins. Peter says in all of 1 Peter 2:24 that “He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by His wounds you have been healed.” Paul said in the entirety of 2 Corinthians 5:21 that “God made Him (Jesus) who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Jesus bore our sins so that we would not be rejected by God. He did this for us. Many would tell you that God is love and would never reject you, but that’s not what the Bible says. Ephesians 5:6 tells us that “God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient.” What is this disobedience that Paul is talking about? It’s doing anything contrary to the will of God, there is another word we use for it and that is sin. The Bible tells us that we all have sinned (Romans 3:23) and if we say that we have not sinned we are lying to ourselves (1 John 1:8). Our sins will be judged eternally by God (Romans 6:23), and we see that played out in Revelation 20:11-15. “Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. The earth and the heavens fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what they had done. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. Anyone whose name was not found written in the Book of Life was thrown into the lake of fire.” Jesus took the punishment for our sins so that He could offer us forgiveness for those sins. God loves us and wants us to be with Him forever, but He is also just and will have to judge us for any sin that has not been covered in the blood of Jesus. John 3:36 tells us that “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on them.” Through Jesus, God has made a way for us to be with Him forever.
It’s the greatest thing anyone has ever done. No greater love has ever been shown. No greater horror has ever been seen. The perfect one, the innocent one, bearing the sins of His enemies so that whoever will call upon the name of the Lord would not have to face the same things Jesus did and can experience the indescribable Love that only comes from a relationship with Jesus Christ.
