(Text and Audio)
Title: Why Have You Forsaken Me?
Parallel Study
Mark: Identical, except for one small thing, which we will talk about in a moment.
Luke 23:44-46
Now it was about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour. Then the sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was torn in two. And when Jesus had cried out with a loud voice, He said, “Father, ‘into Your hands I commit My spirit.’” Having said this, He breathed His last.
So Luke omits the question of being forsaken, but does add Jesus’s final words, which do signify faith and trust in the Father.
John:
Does not record the “Father, why have you forsaken me” comment. But does note that Jesus does say, “It is finished” after taking the drink of wine, which we will come to in Matthew’s gospel next week.
6th hour to 9th hour darkness.
(Noon until 3PM). This was odd. If it got very dark at noon, you’d know something strange was going on.
Matthew Henry has some great observations about this that I don’t want to miss:
There was darkness epi pasan teµn geµn-(over all the earth); so most interpreters understand it, though our translation confines it to “that land.”
Some of the ancients appealed to the annals of the nation concerning this extraordinary eclipse at the death of Christ, as a thing well known, and which gave notice to those parts of the world of something great then in doing; as the sun’s going back in Hezekiah’s time did.
It is reported that Dionysius, at Heliopolis in Egypt, took notice of this darkness, and said, Aut Deus naturae patitur, aut mundi machina dissolvitur–
This translates to: Either “the God of nature is suffering”, or “the machine of the world is tumbling into ruin.”
An extraordinary light gave intelligence of the birth of Christ (ch. 2:2), and therefore it was proper that an extraordinary darkness should notify his death, for he is the Light of the world
Why have you forsaken me?
This was a reference to David’s Psalm 21:1
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?
Packer notes:
Jesus’s desolate cry is a fulfillment of Psalm 22:1 showing the depth of His distress as He suffers separation from the Father. Lather the apostles realized that Jesus was enduring the dreadful wrath of God’s judgment on sin. This was all the more agonizing to One whose relationship with the Father was perfect in love. The cry is in Aramaic, except the Hebrew “Eli” Mark gives the Aramaic “Eloi.”
I want to ask and answer some very, very difficult questions as we conclude this morning. I will be very transparent with you in offering MY responses to these questions, and as always, if you have a thought or comment, feel free to share it.
Was this a moment of doubt, and therefore sin?
Answer: It was doubt, but doubt is not necessarily sin, it is the dawn of faith. Was this not what Jesus went through in his prayer in the garden.
Note: To have a doubt is not to live in doubt. Living in doubt means you don’t believe, and James speaks to this.
James 1:6-8
6 But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. 7 For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; 8 he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.
Was this very question a sin?
Answer: No, it MUST not have been, otherwise, Jesus’s mission has failed.
Was he really forsaken? And if not, is Jesus mistaken? And if Jesus is mistaken, is this not a sin?
Answer: He absolutely, positively WAS forsaken.
Why was he forsaken? Because he had become sin.
Why had he become sin? For you.
(Not “for us”, but “for you”)
Close your eyes with me for a moment. Picture Jesus on the cross. He raises his head, just before giving up his spirit and says, “For you.”
Pray/QA