Last week we saw Jesus fulfilling His Fourth Commandment responsibility by taking care of His mother, Mary. He completed the fulfillment of the fourth commandment by giving her to the disciple whom He loved, John to care for her. Last week Jesus became motherless. This evening we see Jesus become a complete orphan as He loses His Father as well. This evening we see Jesus completely alone, suffering for the sins of the whole world.
Before we get to Jesus’ words, let us take a moment to look at another significant event that is portrayed in this text, the event of darkness. Our text tells us that it was about the sixth hour, that is, about noon. During the middle of the day darkness covers the whole land for three hours, until the ninth hour, that is three in the afternoon. How can this be? This is nothing short of a miracle of God. Remember, it is the time of the month that there is a full moon. I am not an astronomer, but I am told that there can be no eclipse during a full moon. So, that would rule out any logical reason for darkness at midday. But there was darkness, and we, as Christians might actually say, by a miracle of God.
There was darkness because this was the darkest time for the world since before the creation of the world. At creation we are told that all was darkness and chaos. At the very beginning, the first thing that God does is that He called light out of the darkness of chaos. And we remember that the light was not the Sun as it was created on day four of creation. Anyway, following Adam and Eve’s sin in the Garden of Eden the darkness of sin has infected the world. In the Gospel of John we are reminded that Jesus is the light of the world. Jesus is the light that the darkness cannot understand nor can it overcome. The darkness of the devil in our sin filled world cannot understand the love of God, so much that He would give His life for His creation, nor can the darkness of the devil overcome the Light of Christ. And yet, there is darkness while Jesus is on the cross. It is no coincidence that this darkness is during the time that God forsook Jesus who became a curse on the cross.
In this dark hour we hear Jesus’ cry. He cries, “My God, My God.” Jesus cries out to God. Notice that He does not call Him “Father.” At this point Jesus has no Father. Jesus has no one. He is left on His own to suffer for the sins of the world. This is in direct contrast to just a few hours earlier when Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane praying to His Father in heaven. Now Jesus is in a different situation than when He was in the Garden. Now Jesus is cursed with the sins of all people of all places of all times.
Notice that at no time did Jesus forsake God, nor did He lose His God-ness, His divinity. He was still true God and true man. Jesus did not forsake God, but God forsook Him. In His humility, His humanity, in much the same way that you and I will one day face our own death, our own physical passing from this world, Jesus, as true man is suffering and is about to die.
As David prophesied and foresaw in the Psalm Jesus cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?” (Psalm 22:1). God the Father forsook Jesus, God the son on the cross. Why was Jesus forsaken? Jesus was forsaken because He was made to be a curse. On Jesus was placed all the sins of all people of all places of all times. Jesus became sin and as sin He could not be in the presence of God who is perfection.
Jesus was forsaken which is what suffering eternal death is all about. Hell, eternal death, is complete absence from God and His love. Jesus was forsaken by God. God’s love was taken away from Him and He was suffering eternal death on the cross. I am not sure we as human beings can completely understand the torment and suffering of hell. We may compare it to being depressed, down, burnout, or whatever human way we may think and yet magnifying such suffering to the degree of suffering for all people of all places of all times. But, the simplest way to understand hell is to know that it is total absence from God and His love or any love or that matter. Truly, it is not a place anyone would want to be.
Certainly we have days when we would like to ask why God has forsaken us, or at least we feel like He has forsaken us. Even David wrote in many of his Psalms that he felt as if God had forsaken or abandoned him. Yet, our feelings of being forsaken by God do not come anywhere near what it is truly like to be forsaken by God.
Jesus was forsaken by God. He suffered what we deserved to suffer. Our sins earn for us death, physical death, yes, but even more, our sins earn for us the eternal death penalty of hell. Left to our own devises to save ourselves we would be utterly helpless. Left to ourselves we fail miserably. Instead of working our way out of hell we tend to make things worse. We daily sin much and are in need of forgiveness. We sin in our thoughts, with our words and in our actions, our deeds. We sin sins of commission, doing those things we should not be doing and we sin sins of omission, failing to do those things we should be doing. As God says in Genesis, every intention of our hearts is evil all the time. We are conceived and born in sin. Our very nature is to sin and we simply cannot help ourselves. And the price for our sin was set in the beginning, in the Garden of Eden, the price for sin is death, human death, eternal death and hell for sin.
Because God lives in the eternal present He is omniscient, that is He is all knowing. For God there is no yesterday and there is no tomorrow, there is only the now. For God, He is omniscient because He sees all of our history and time, which He created for us on day one with the creation of light marking night and day. Thus, God knows all that will happen even before it happens. We call this knowledge God’s foreknowledge. Yet, just because God knows all before it happens does not mean that God predetermines or predestines things to happen. And here in God’s foreknowledge we see just how much God truly loves us. Knowing that Adam and Eve would sin, knowing that we would be conceived and born in sin, knowing that God would have to take care of the sins of all people of all places of all times, and even knowing that many would reject Him and His forgiveness, He created the world anyway.
Fortunately we do not get what we deserve. Instead we get what Jesus earned for us. We get forgiveness. We get life. We get these gifts because God gives them to us. We get these gifts because Jesus has earned them for us. Yes, we can refuse and reject these gifts. We can try to go it alone. We can try to get to heaven of our own works and merit, but as we have seen, our good works and merit amount to “digging” our hole deeper in hell.
As bad as it sounds, we rejoice in the cross of Christ. We rejoice, not because we like to see Jesus die for us; not because of Jesus’ death. We rejoice because His death earned our forgiveness. His death earned our new life, renewed life here on this earth and eternal life in heaven. We rejoice because we know the rest of the story. Jesus did not stay dead, but rose on Easter morning.
We do not like the dark. As children we grow up afraid of the dark. Darkness is frightening, maybe because it is under the cover of the dark that many bad things happen. Darkness is one way of hiding our wrongdoing. When we are down, when we are depressed, when we think we are all alone, we feel like we are in the dark. Jesus’ suffering and death were the darkest hours of this world. Jesus, true God and true man, took on all our darkness. He, who knew no sin, became sin for us. Jesus, the light of the world, died the most cruel death, death on the cross. Jesus died that we might have life and have it to the fullest. Jesus died that we might have faith, forgiveness, life and salvation. And Jesus rose, the first fruits of all who died showing us that as He rose, we too will rise again. Thanks be to God and to Him alone be the glory. Amen.
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