Back

Sunday March 3, 2002

Text: Matthew 27:33-50 Title: The Word of Anguish

Intro: We find ourselves at the foot of the cross once again. It is now
midday. Jesus has been exposed to and suffering from the sun and its
burning rays for over three hours. It has been torture. His mind has
also been tortured by the taunts and assaults hurled at him from the
crowd. Jesus has almost reached the point of exhaustion when a
supernatural event takes place. In the middle of the day, darkness sets
in. I can imagine people in fear driven by frenzy crying, rushing
looking for an answer, or better yet, a remedy for this fright. Some may
have now finally considered the fact that Jesus is who He said He was,
the Son of God. Others determined that God was about to bring down His
judgment upon them. In all of this activity and speculation, Jesus
utters the words of our text, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
I would like for us to consider these words to move us to a deeper love
and surrender to the Lord Jesus Christ. I would like for us to consider
what this anguish expresses for us.

1. The Authentication of Son of God
Something is happening that our finite minds have difficulty comprehending. In the middle of the darkness God is dealing with His Son. Consider...

A. The authenticity of His love
Jesus recalls His own words.. Jn 10:17.
He uses a term of personal affection "My God"
His reciprocal love is unshaken and unshakable, even though God had to hide His face from Him.

B. The authenticity of His trust
God=Eloi-the strength of God.. better said, "O my God, I must trust You in the middle of this anguish, agony and darkness." This is similar to the words of Job - Jb 13:15
Quote: Olford - "Had the faithfulness of God's Son broken down, the substitutionary character of his death would have been invalidated."
We see Jesus unshakable:
With all the physical suffering at the hands of men
With all the mental suffering at the hands of Satan
With all the spiritual suffering at the hand of God
He was unshakable in His love and trust.
Illus.. Fanny Crosby was blinded as an infant by faulty medical
treatment. She wrote over 8,000 hymns. She wrote "All the Way My Savior
Leads Me." She could write this because she saw God's hand at work in
her hardship. In her autobiography, Crosby spoke of that erring
physician and the overruling care of her Great Physician. "But I have
not for a moment in more than 85 years felt a spark of resentment
against him because I have always believed from my youth to this very
moment that the Good Lord, in His Infinite Mercy, by this means
consecrated me to do the work I a still permitted to do"

2. The Abandonment of the Son of God
Jesus could be saying, "I understand why the nation forsakes me, for they never recognized in me the Messiah. Jn 1:11
Again Jesus could be saying, "I understand my own family forsaking me, His brothers didn't believe - Jn 7:5
Again Jesus says, I can understand my disciples forsaking me. They fled - Matt 26:56
Again Jesus, but why have YOU forsaken me?
Forsaken is a difficult word to understand. It's best meaning would be dereliction, separation or leaving entirely alone.
Why did God do this? We find the answer in Psalm 22 verse 3.
In that moment, the Lord Jesus was identifying Himself with

A. The reality of sin
Jesus did not just take on guilt, but the sin in all of its ugly reality.
Imagine the purest character ever known being brought down into the most horrible surroundings.
Jesus came into contact with the corruption and horror of sin in its outworking.
The soul of Jesus experienced the guilt and shame and the awfulness of sin.
Paul is seeking to communicate these thoughts when he writes... Jesus was made to be sin for us. (2 Cor 5:21)
That is why He cried out these words of anguish!

B. The totality of sin
The Bible states we have all turned away from God (Is 53:6)
When John the Baptist saw Jesus he called Him "the lamb who takes away the sin of the world." (Jn 1:29)
God placed on Him all of our sin. We cannot imagine what that could mean.
We can illustrate with a magnifying glass... It focuses the rays of the sun upon one point to burn with concentrated heat. Our crime, corruption, and guilt of the human race, in its most concentrated form,
was made to focus upon the head of the Son of God.
C. The fatality of sin
The ultimate result is death (Ezek 18:4, Rom 6:23)
This is not merely physical death, it was hell, alienation from God.
In those 3 hours, a whole eternity of hell was compressed into the experience of our Savior.
When two friends love each other dearly, the longer their friendship is unbroken, the more tragic and painful it is when the break comes.
Remember, Jesus hand never known one moment of unbroken fellowship with His Father.
Now God hid His face from Him! No wonder he cries these words of anguish.
But we sit here today knowing that there is a light that shines from that darkness.
3. The Accomplishment of the Son of God
During those hours of separation, not a word passed from the lips of the Savior.
Now he has emerged. The sun is about to break through again. He looks back on that shattering experience and asks the question in our text. It was a completed act. He is about to make it official to a world of angels and principalities. The reverberations of the shout "It is finished."
There was a fulfillment of all the love, grace and mercy of God in Christ for all of us.
When Jesus was made to be the sin for us, the work of reconciliation was complete.
Reconciliation was completed and we immediately experience two results.

A. So that we could become reinstated
We are now made to appear before God in a favorable light.
It is called justification. It means just as if we never sinned.
God devised the means so that His banished ones are not expelled from Him.

B. So that we could become recreated
We are a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17)

Conclusion: There can only be one response to this word of anguish of
Christ. We need to gladly surrender our loves for His service.

Top of Page