10th April 1998
"WHY  HAVE  YOU
FORSAKEN  ME ?"
Kenneth Thien
 
 

" My God, My God, why have You forsaken me? "  Matthew 27: 46

Such was the cry of Jesus hanging on the cross. Was it only the physical torture, the emotional torment of being abandoned, betrayed, and denied by His disciples that caused Him to utter such cry? I think there is more than that to that cry.

For on that cross, Jesus borne the sin of the whole world. In His spirit, when He look to His Father, for the first and only time in eternity, He saw the back of His Father. For the Father looked upon His Son, and saw the all the sins of this world. In His holiness, He turned His face away from Jesus.

To illustrate the pain and torment in Jesus' spirit. A story was told of a couple of of missionaries in a far and remote place. They have a young son aged 3-4 yr old with them. The son enjoys a beautiful trust and love relationship with the father. He knew no other more intimate relationship than that with his parents. One day, he had a nusty turmor grown on his body. He was down with fever from the infection and his life was threatened. Finally, a doctor on the mission field came and examine the child. He told the parents that the child needed to be operated upon immediately to save his life. The only problem was that there was no aneastatic. The father knew also that operation has to be carried out. He took the son aside, and said this, "Son, there is this nusty turmor on you that is causing you sick. Though it is not because of your own fault, it has to be taken out. You are going to feel great pain. But I want you to know, even while you are feeling this pain, I love you and I will always love you. So be brave son. " The operation went on, and the child was strapped to a makeshift operation table. As the surgeon's knife fell, the son sream with pain. He looked to his father who happened to stand at the door, to seek comfort from the one whom he trust and love since birth. The father looked at the son in pain, and could not do anything. He turned his head from seeing the suffering son. Image the loneliness of the son. The trauma he was going through.

Although we can draw marked distinction from Jesus' suffering and the suffering of the missionaries' son, the trauma that Jesus went thru was nothing less. Jesus knew right from the start that He is to suffer this, but it did not stop Him from expressing this deep sense of being forsaken and rejected when He borne the sin of the world. He did not only died for our sins, He carried upon Himself the consequences of sin - a sense of alienation from God.

As the book of Romans said it, this the justice of God, the world sins, Jesus paid the price.

And this is the love of God, that the wrath of God on this world, did not fall on us, but fell squarely on the Son of God.

The beautiful relationship between the Father and the Son as expressed in Matthew 3:17 " This is my Son, whom I love; with Him I am well pleased." Has turned to the painful cry of " My God, My God, why have You forsaken me? " Jesus was forsaken on our behalf, so that we willl never be forsaken by God if we come to God the Father.

Many Christains do not know this, and never experience the freedom that the cross brings to those who felt rejected. Rejection can be registered in the human spirit even before a person can understand human relationship, e.g. at birth or in the womb. Example : new born babies whose sex was not what the family expects.

Brothers and sisters, on this Good Friday, this is the good news : We don't need to go on carrying with us this sense of alienation and rejection. Jesus can and will set us free, if we come to Him to receive it !
 

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“Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst.” (John 19:28)
 

When Christ carried the cross from Jerusalem to Golgotha, he did not carry the whole cross, only the cross-piece.  But this itself was made of cypress wood and weighed 75-125 lbs, about as heavy as a bag of cement.  Being forced to carry this the 700 yards of narrow, winding streets from Pilate’s place to the execution ground at Golgotha was an extra torture for an already flogged man.

The nails securing Christ’s arms to the cross were driven through the wrists, not his palms.  The palms could not withstand the weight of the body: because the hands would tear through longways.  Instead, the eight-inch nails were driven precisely into the space between the wristbones.  These were dislocated, but not shattered.

Jesus was then hoisted up and slotted onto the vertical stem at Golgotha.  A body suspended by the wrists will sag downwards, pulled by gravity.  This produces enormous tension in the muscles of the arms, shoulders and chest wall.  The ribs are drawn upwards so that the chest is fixed in position as if the victim has just drawn a large breath – but cannot breathe out.  The severely strained arms, shoulders and chest muscles develop agonising cramp.

This did not satisfy the Romans.  This is why they nailed the feet too.  The condemned man could buy time by pushing himself up on the nails in his feet, stretching his legs and so raising the body to relieve the chest and arms.  This allowed him to breathe better – but only for a while.  But perching with the full weight of the body on a square nail driven through the middle bones of the feet brings intolerable pain.  The executioners could shorten the ordeal too, smashing the legs, thus making it impossible for the dying man to push himself up to breathe.

Excessive sweating brought severe thirst.  Blood loss and swelling caused by flogging reduced the circulation volume, blood pressure fell and the heart pounded faster.  The excessive loss of salt through sweat, was barely compatible with life.  The heart began to fail and the lungs filled with fluid.  The beginning of the death, croaked in each failing and painful breath as his heart began to give out.

This is the background to the thirst of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Extreme  pain.   Excruciating suffering.
 

Lessons
What are the lessons we can draw from these last words of Jesus Christ?

Firstly, the expression of our Lord Jesus Christ indicated His humanity. His expression indicated his intense bodily suffering. Our Lord Jesus Christ is truly God and truly man. John chapter 1 Vs 1 says “ In the beginning was the word, the word was with God and the word was God.” In vs14, “The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us”. Jesus is a personal God. He knows the physical and the emotions of each and everyone of us here. He knows how we feel.  He was hungry as we are hungry (Matthew 4:2). He wept over the death of his closest friend, Lazarus and we weep over our sorrows (John 11:35), He slept due to exhaustion as we sleep too in order to replenish our energy (Mark 4:38). And in our text today, he cried out because he was thirsty. There is no doubt that Jesus is truly man.
Yet at the same time, during his life on earth, Jesus gave full proof of his deity. He spoke with divine wisdom. He acted in Divine power and holiness through miracles, deliverance and the forgiveness of sins. He displayed divine Love.
Jesus is both Son of Man & Son of God. Not two separate personalities but one possessing two natures – the Divine and the Human.
My dear friends, Jesus is very real to us. He came to be like one of us.  He sympathised with us. For some of us, we may question why The God of Love has to allow sufferings in our lives? Why we are often misunderstood, misjudged or misrepresented? Why do  we have to go through extreme physical pain?  The simplistic answer is that suffering in this fallen world cannot be avoided   BUT  more importantly is that - whatever happens to us – Christ has been there before us! He has experienced the emotional & physical turmoil. His cruel cruxifiction on the cross for three hours has fulfilled what the prophet Isaiah prophesied - He has borne our grief and carried our sorrows. My dear friends therefore bring your burden to the Lord in prayer and he will bear it for you.

Secondly, the expression “I thirst” is Jesus’ act of submission to the will of God and the authority of the scriptures. As I mention earlier, Jesus has divine power because he is God himself. Since he could turn water into wine in the very first wedding that he had attended in Cana, he could have easily ordered the clouds to shed rain in order to ease his discomfort and quench his thirst? Our Lord Jesus never performed any miracles for his own benefit & comfort. While being tempted in the dessert for forty days and forty nights, he never gave in to the temptation to Satan. So why should he give in to the desire of his human needs? His refusal to perform any divine act to quench his thirst was to submit to the will of His father.
Many a times, when there’s calamities happening to us for example financial difficulties, broken relationships, family crisis, pressure at work. We often pray to God subtly for our own will be Done and not his……..Jesus at the very point of his death was even denied of a cool glass of water and yet he still submitted to the Father’s will. This shows great discernment of God’s will and maturity of submitting to the will of the Father. Paul the Apostle in his epistle to the Philippians related that he has learned the secret to be contented and that contentment in Lord’s Jesus Christ has constantly giving Him joy and peace in serving  the Lord.

As I quote A W Tozer, the prophet of the 20th Century, THE PURSUIT OF GOD WILL REQUIRE FAITH BEYOND REASONS. AND IN THE CLOUDS OF UNKNOWING GOD’S SOVEREIGN WILL BE REVEALED TO US.

 
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