Forsaken
Matthew 27:46, Remsen Bible Fellowship, 7 Words, 4/6/2025
When you think, “God-forsaken”, what comes to mind?
Do you think a desert, those patches of the world seemingly inhospitable to life? Or does your mind run to situations in war-torn countries where it seems any sign of God - or even his image in man - has disappeared? Or perhaps you think of a time in your own life, when you felt particularly desolate and cried out, “where are you, God?”
That kind of cry can come in a couple of different ways. It can come with a tone of despisal, anger, and bitterness. I know I mentioned this recently, but I’ve heard one pastor describe an atheist as someone who doesn’t believe that God exists—and is mad at him for not being there. There’s a real sense in which disbelief in God is the self-defense mechanism of a father-hungry soul: if he isn’t there, he can’t disappoint me.
Of course, not many people sitting in church on Sunday morning are among the less than 10% of Americans who claim to be atheist. But we can suffer from the same kind of anger, fist shaking, or silent disappointment that the atheist does. Perhaps it’s even more acute. It really does hurt more when you know God is there, and it still feels like he’s not interested.
In a real sense, the sin of the chief priests, the Pharisees, and the other religious leaders of Israel in Jesus day seems to be tied to this kind of disappointment with God. Though Jesus had clearly presented supernatural evidence of his divine Person (Acts 2:22), they rejected the obvious Presence of the Lord. Because they didn’t believe in the reality of a God? No, but because God came—and he didn’t bring in the kingdom they had hoped for. He was there, and he wasn’t what they expected or wanted. So the servants beat the Son, killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard (see the parable of the tenets, Matthew 21). He who came to lay the foundation of a kingdom not of this world, was rejected by men, smitten, and afflicted.
But here is the burning question of our text today: as Jesus hung there on the cross, was he forsaken by the Father, too? After all that he suffered at the hands of men, was Jesus abandoned on the cross?
Matthew 27:45-50, 45 Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. 46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” 47 And some of the bystanders, hearing it, said, “This man is calling Elijah.” 48 And one of them at once ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine, and put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink. 49 But the others said, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him.” 50 And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit.
Jesus Faced God’s Wrath: so you don’t have to (v45)
In verse forty-five it tells us darkness swallowed the land. What did this mean? Why did the darkness take over the land in the middle of the day? The darkness, though surely a literal description of what happened that Friday afternoon, is also highly symbolic.
In the parable of the wedding feast in Matthew 22:13, Jesus describes a servant who comes to the wedding feast in inappropriate garments—and is bound hand and foot, and cast out of the king’s presence—into the outer darkness. In the imagery of the parable, the clean wedding garments which the guests are to wear represent the righteousness which is given to them as a gift by the king. He had sent his servants out into the roads to invite guests in place of the previous wicked servants who had spurned his invitation.
And on the cross, Jesus was, as it were, taking on all of our filthy garments. All of your sin, all of your wickedness, all of the lies and the murders and the adultery and the hatred and the envy and the fornication and the pornography use and the gossip and the words spoken in rage and the child abuse and the disobedience to parents and the cheating on your taxes and the being lazy at work and the theft and every other kind of evil the word has known: Jesus clothed himself in that sin. He so took it on himself that the apostle Paul could say in 2 Corinthians 5:21 that he became sin.
And he did so for a purpose. That purpose was that he might stand in your place and mine. He took that sin upon himself in order to bear the punishment which his people deserve. He took that sin on himself in order to die for it.
But the death he had to endure was not merely physical in nature. He had to face the wrath of God. If a holy God is to look past the sin of wicked people - or people who feel like they're pretty good, but are still objectively wicked in God’s sight - then God must punish a substitute. Someone must bear that guilt away. The OT sacrificial system pointed forward to this reality. Lambs, rams, bulls, goats, pigeons, and doves—all had their blood shed in the place of sinful human beings. But as Hebrews 10:4 teaches us, it was impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. We not only need a substitute. We need a sufficient and effective substitute.
And such a substitute was the Lamb of God. The eternal Son took on human flesh, a real human nature. As a man, Jesus is fit, he is acceptable, as a substitute: he is a true human being, and so can stand in the place of humans, bearing our sin. But as the only man who is also truly God, he is sufficient and able to effectively bear the weight of the sins of the world.
And so, for three hours on Golgotha, Jesus was cast into the outer darkness of the wrath of God.
Jesus Was Abandoned: so that you need never be (v46)
At the end of those three hours, Jesus cried out in a loud voice: “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?”—“my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Remember the prayer of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane: “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me” (Matthew 22:39). Jesus looked ahead and knew what was coming. He knew that on the cross there would be physical suffering, to be sure, but that worst of all tortures would be nothing compared to taking on human sin and bearing the Hell of God’s wrath against that sin. He desperately wanted to avoid that, if at all possible. But, in faith, he prays: “nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.”
Well, what did the Father will? According to Isaiah 53:10, “it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief.” And, on the cross, having been crushed by his Father, Jesus cries out in seeming desperation - my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? He is quoting the words of Psalm 22, which continues in Psalm 22:1 with another painful question: “why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?”
When Jesus hung on the cross, bearing the weight of the sins of the world, he was forsaken by the Father. I want to be clear in my language here. In no way did Jesus ever cease to be God, never was there a rupture in the perfect Divine unity of Father, Son, and Spirit. But on the cross, the Son ceased to feel the pleasure of the Father, a pleasure which had clearly marked his earthly life (see Matthew 3:17, 17:5), t say nothing of the eternal perfection of Divine love within the godhead. But instead of that pleasure, for those three hours on Golgotha, Jesus experienced the absolute torrent of the wrath of God against sin. Against my sin. Against your sin. Against the sin of the world.
His prayer had been for the cup to pass. The Father had answered that prayer with a “no.” Instead he handed the cup to the Son, who drank it to the full.
People sometimes ask or wonder about the problem of evil. How could an all powerful God who is also loving make a world with sin and pain and suffering. The Bible never tries to answer that question in a neat theological fashion. Instead, we are shown what God did about evil. The second person of the Trinity, God himself, came into human history and took the weight of hell on his own shoulders.
Why does he allow evil? We don’t know. What did he do about it? That, we do know. He came down, for us men and for our salvation. He was incarnate, and bore the weight of all the sin and evil upon himself. The Son was forsaken by the Father, so that all those evil sinners - like you and me - could be forgiven and brought into the family of God. Jesus’ answer to the problem of evil has two parts, the second part of which is that he will one day come and put an end to it all. But the first part is this: on the cross, he paid for it all. Do you think no one understands your pain? Do you think God has forgotten you? Do you think no one can sympathize? Jesus can, and then some. He was forsaken by the Father, so that you would never be.
Friend, if you don’t know him, I urge you now to put your trust in this One who died for you. He bore your sins in his body on the tree. He took the curse of God’s wrath so that you could joyfully stand in God’s presence without fear.
Jesus Endured the Scorn of the Bystanders: for his confidence in God (v47-49)
The cry of Jesus, “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”, is not just a cry of desperation or pain, though. It surely is that, but it is also far more.
He is also, as I noted earlier, quoting from Psalm 22. And Psalm 22 begins with that cry of desolation, and then moves into a catalog of David’s sufferings from those who surround him. Psalm 22:7-8 says, “All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads; 8 “He trusts in the LORD; let him deliver him; let him rescue him, for he delights in him!” Note how this maps onto Matthew 27:47-49, ‘And some of the bystanders, hearing it, said, “This man is calling Elijah.” 48 And one of them at once ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine, and put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink. 49 But the others said, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him.”’
They scoff and they scorn. Perhaps they misheard Jesus when he said “Eli” or, “my God.” They could easily have heard “Eli-jah” or “my God is salvation.” In either case, Jesus is clearly calling out for Divine intervention, and they say, “ha! Let’s see if God actually sends Elijah to fix this mess.” It rings of the words they spoke back in v42, “He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him.”
David had described this experience in Psalm 22 as being surrounded by bulls of bashan, wild dogs, and ravening lions. The evil men who mocked our Lord were acting not like image bearers of God, but like predators surrounding a wounded prey animal. And as real as the sufferings of David were when he wrote this, they paled in comparison to what Jesus was going through. Jesus was filling up - fulfilling - the sufferings of David. This Psalm, personal to David though it may have been, is clearly messianic—that is, it points forward to the life and sufferings of Jesus, the Messiah.
This is particularly instructive, because it tells us that, even though Jesus had faced the Hell of God’s wrath and had been desolate to the point of crying out for God to answer why he had left, Jesus’ confidence in his Father remained. Psalm 22:3-5, 9-11:
3 Yet you are holy,
enthroned on the praises of Israel.
4 In you our fathers trusted;
they trusted, and you delivered them.
5 To you they cried and were rescued;
in you they trusted and were not put to shame…
9 Yet you are he who took me from the womb;
you made me trust you at my mother’s breasts.
10 On you was I cast from my birth,
and from my mother’s womb you have been my God.
11 Be not far from me,
for trouble is near,
and there is none to help.
Jesus was willing and able to suffer the abandonment of his followers, the physical brutality of crucifixion, the mocking scorn of the bystanders, and even endure the wrath of God, for one reason alone: his rock-solid confidence in the Salvation God would bring.
Jesus Died Triumphantly: purchasing your access to God (v50-51)
What this meant, ultimately, was that when Jesus came to die, he died not in defeat, but in triumph. In verse 50 we are not given any more words of Jesus, Matthew simply tells us that he cried out in a loud voice and yielded up his spirit. We know from the other gospels what he said. “It is finished” and “Father, into your hands I commit my Spirit.” Jesus knew his work was done, and he laid down his life of his own accord, as we read in John chapter 10 last week.
But Matthew has a point in not putting all of that action on screen for us. He wants to simply show us the effect of the triumphant death of Jesus. So in v51, we read, “And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.” What is going on in this verse?
The temple curtain was a massive fabric wall - 60 feet high by 30 feet wide, and four inches thick - which separated the Holy Place (where the priests alone ministered) from the Most Holy Place, the Holy of Holies. The Most Holy place was where God made his presence known in Israel, and this curtain separated off that area. Only the high priest was allowed to enter beyond the curtain, behind the veil, and he only once a year.
Friends, Jesus ripped that curtain in two. It was torn from top to bottom. Part of what this means is that Jesus went into the presence of his Father with a sufficient sacrifice - his own blood of the covenant - and that that sacrifice was enough to open the way to the Father for all who believe in him. No longer do we need a merely human priest to take our sacrifice to God. Jesus, the God-Man, is our priest and he offered up, once and for all, a sacrifice which was enough to atone for all of our sins.
Hebrews 9:25-28, “Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, 26 for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. 27 And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, 28 so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.”
Jesus’ sacrifice was once for all. This is why we do not believe the bread and fruit of the vine which we take in communion are literally Jesus’ body and blood. He spoke those words symbolically the night before his crucifixion. But the breaking of his body and shedding of his blood was a one-time event, for which there is no need to repeat. We don’t offer up Christ’s sacrifice to God in the eucharist—he already did that. We partake with grateful hearts for what he has already done. We are given bodily, tangible, reminders of what he did for us—reminders which truly nourish our forgetful hearts.
But friends, no more sacrifice is needed. Jesus already opened the way to the Father. Again, this fulfills the words of the last Psalm 22:22-31
22 I will tell of your name to my brothers;
in the midst of the congregation I will praise you:
23 You who fear the LORD, praise him!
All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him,
and stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel!
24 For he has not despised or abhorred
the affliction of the afflicted,
and he has not hidden his face from him,
but has heard, when he cried to him.
25 From you comes my praise in the great congregation;
my vows I will perform before those who fear him.
26 The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied;
those who seek him shall praise the LORD!
May your hearts live forever!
27 All the ends of the earth shall remember
and turn to the LORD,
and all the families of the nations
shall worship before you.
28 For kingship belongs to the LORD,
and he rules over the nations.
29 All the prosperous of the earth eat and worship;
before him shall bow all who go down to the dust,
even the one who could not keep himself alive.
30 Posterity shall serve him;
it shall be told of the Lord to the coming generation;
31 they shall come and proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn,
that he has done it.
We will tell what he has done, because through him, we have been brought near.
Conclusion
Brothers and sisters, let us marvel at what the Lord has done for us. Do you feel forsaken by God today? Does he feel far from the words of your groaning? He is not. If you have trusted in Jesus, he has paid for all of your sins, and you will never be forsaken. And if you have not trusted in him, then friend, now is the time. Put your hope in Jesus Christ, and he throws open wide the access you need to forgiveness, to eternal security in his presence, and to the gift of his Spirit who knits you into the family of God, enables you to walk in obedience, and is the downpayment of your eternal salvation. Faith in Jesus is the way - the only way - to be right with God and confident of your standing with him. He was forsaken for you, so that you would never be forsaken.
Share this post