March 26, 2006

Lenten Series 4

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?  Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning?” (Ps.22:1).  These words were first written by David, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, 1100 years before Jesus was ever born.  He was prophesying the scene that would take place as the coming Messiah would experience absolute anguish.

Another thousand years before that, this scene of anguish began being practiced.  At God’s direction, the children of Israel held an annual rehearsal of this scene of abandonment.  Once a year, on the Day of Atonement, the people would gather for a very important event.  A reminder of the seriousness of their sins and their need for forgiveness.

The high priest would bring forward a live goat.  You can visualize the hush coming over the crowd as he would lead this pure, unspotted goat to where everyone could see it.  Then, in somber ceremony, he places both his hands on the head of the young animal.  As the people look on, the priest makes his proclamation:  “The sins of the people be upon you.”  He confessed over it all the wickedness and rebellion of the Israelites – all their sins – and put them on the goat’s head.  The innocent animal received the sins of the Israelites!  All the lusting, adultery, anger, selfishness, and cheating are transferred from the sinners to this goat, this scapegoat.

It is then carried to the edge of the wilderness and released.  Banished.  Forsaken.  Sin must be purged, released, gotten rid of.  So the scapegoat is abandoned.  Forsaken.  Separated from the people.  So that the sins would be separated from the people.  The scapegoat is the sinbearer.  He carried the sins of the people out of their sight.  Get out of my sight, goat!  The people are relieved.  God is pleased.  But the sinbearer is alone.  Abandoned.  Forsaken.

A scene practiced thousands of times.  But now it’s time for the real event.  Fast forward a couple thousand years.  Go to Calvary, just outside Jerusalem.  See the Sinbearer, the real Sinbearer.  The Sinbearer is alone again.  Abandoned.  Forsaken.  Every lie ever told, every object ever coveted, every promise ever broken is on his shoulders.  He is sin!  The sins have been heaped on his head!  God turned away from Him.  Get out of my sight, goat!

God forsaking God.  We can’t even fathom it.  The two who have been one are now two.  Jesus, who has been with God for eternity, is now alone.  Christ, who was the expression of God, is abandoned.  The Trinity is dismantled.  The Godhead is disjointed.  The unity is dissolved.

And this is more than Jesus can take.  There is no doubt He was suffering physically.  If you have read the scriptures, if you have watched the graphic movies that portray it, if you have researched what crucifixion was like, you can maybe begin to imagine the awful pain Jesus was being inflicted with.  But He withstood the beatings and remained strong at the mock trials.  He watched in silence as those He loved ran away.  He did not retaliate when the insults were hurled nor did He scream when the nails pierced his wrists.

But when God turned his head away, that was more than Jesus could handle.  He didn’t say, “Father in heaven, why are you letting them torture me like this?”  He said, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  For the first time in his life, Jesus didn’t address the Lord as “Father.”  He couldn’t.  God had forsaken God!  The Father had abandoned his Son.  There is a distance in this cry.  Loneliness.  No one was there.  No one listened.  No one helped.  For Jesus, these last hours on the cross were hell on earth.  This was a cry of absolute anguish.

“My God!” The wail rises from parched lips.  The holy heart was broken. Sent from the Father's side. The Son of God forsaken. The holy sacrifice.  The Sinbearer screams out as He is suffering separation from God.  “WHY!  WHY?  Why have you forsaken me?”  Friends, why was He abandoned by the Father that loved Him?  Listen to the chorus of that same song: “For me He was forsaken, For me He died alone.  My sin forever taken, That I might be His own.”

Why was Jesus forsaken?  Because of Me.  Because of my sins.  Because of your sins.  Because “there is not a righteous man on earth who does what is right and never sins.” (Ec.7:20).  Because you and I and the entire human race has abandoned God.  Because “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” (Is.53:6).  “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.” (Gal.3:13).

This Sinbearer, like the scapegoat of the Old Testament, had all of our sins piled high on his head, and had to be led out of God’s presence into a spiritual wilderness and separated from Him.  Sin cannot remain in the presence of our holy God!  It must be removed!  It must be removed by someone!  And the only Someone who could do that was the Son of God Himself!

So that is why Jesus was forsaken by God.  That is why, for the only time in eternity, He couldn’t call his Father “Dad.”  Because of the times you have been selfish.  Because of the times you have been impatient.  Because of the times you have felt anger or hatred.  Because of the times you have gotten revenge.  Because of the times you thought about revenge.  Because of the times you acted like you did when you thought no one was looking.  Because of the times you helped yourself to something that wasn’t really yours.  Because of your bad decisions.  Because of your bad attitudes.  Because of the times you haven’t considered your Father-child relationship with God something to be cherished and enjoyed and improved.  Because of all the times I have done all these things that you have done!  And because of all the times that everyone on this earth has done things that have not pleased the God who created us all.

This is why God abandoned Jesus!  The Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all.  Jesus had to pick up all our sins, carry them on his back, and carry them completely out of the presence of God.  And so when He spoke this word of absolute anguish, He spoke it because of me.

But here is the good news.  He also spoke this word of absolute anguish Instead of Me!  I am the one who deserved to be separated from God because of my sins!  I am the one who should have been led out into the desert!  I am the one who should have been hanging on that cross, screaming those words at a God who had left me.  But Jesus did.  Instead of me.  Instead of you.  Jesus endured God’s punishment of hell, of separation from Him, in our place.  Right there on the cross.  Why?  Because the Son of God never wanted us to find out what it felt like to have to say “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  Our perfect substitute, who didn’t deserve any of it, spoke these words so that we would never have to!  He endured God’s wrath, so we would never have to!  He paid the full price for our sins, because He knew we never could.

Jesus was abandoned by God, so that we would never have to be.  Jesus spoke these awful words and underwent this cruel thing, instead of you and me.  And moments later, He spoke again:  “It is finished.”  For what must have seemed like an eternity to Jesus, He suffered hell there on the cross.  But then, it was over.  God’s wrath had been poured out.  The Father’s anger was gone.  The stain of sin was washed away.  The darkness passed.  And now there was peace between God and humanity.  Peace between God and you.  Now, at that very moment, God was no longer angry because of your sins.  God had forgiven you.  He had taken out your punishment on Jesus.  Instead of on you.  You and I are in the clear!  God is now our Father.

There’s a story you’ve probably heard before, but one that might help us appreciate the gravity of this situation.  It’s the story of an engineer who operated a drawbridge across a mighty river.  With a control panel of levers and switches, he set into motion a monstrous set of gears that either lifted the bridge for the river traffic or closed it for the oncoming train.

One day he took his young son to work with him.  The fascinated boy hurled question after question at his dad.  It was not until the bridge had raised to allow the passage of a ship that the father noticed the questions had ceased and his son had left the room.  He looked out the window of his control cabin and saw the young boy climbing on the teeth of the gears.  As he hurried toward the machinery to get his son, he heard the worst thing imaginable.  The whistle of an approaching train.

His heart raced.  If he closed the bridge there would be no time to retrieve his son.  He had to make a choice.  Either his son would be killed or a trainload of passengers would be killed.  A horrible dilemma mandated a horrible decision.  The engineer knew what he had to do.  With tears streaming from his eyes, he reached for the lever, and lowered the bridge.

A powerful story that might help us feel the heart of God.  God could not save us without killing his Son.  The heart of God the Father certainly twisted in grief as he slammed the gears of death down on Jesus.  But you know what this story doesn’t even come close to covering?  The fact that God didn’t do this as an accident.  He did it on purpose!  And He didn’t do it for innocent people traveling overhead.  He did it for people who didn’t deserve it.  For people who have rebelled against Him.  He did it because of you and me!  He did it instead of you and me!  Why?  Because He loves us.  More than the life of his own Son.

He allowed his Son to be separated from Him so that we wouldn’t have to be.  “The holy Lamb was stricken. Abandoned and alone. He bore the world's affliction. He bore it as His own. For me He was forsaken, For me He died alone. My sin forever taken, That I might be His own.”  Amen.

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