The Crucifixion and the Abandonment

Introduction: Christ as the Sin-Bearer in Gethsemane, Gabbatha, and Golgotha

0:00 This sermon was preached on Sunday morning, February 11, 1990, at the Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey.

0:14 Now let us turn together in the Word of God to the 15th chapter of the Gospel of Mark, Mark's Gospel, the 15th chapter. and I shall read again in your hearing as we did last Lord's Day verses 22 through 32. Mark 15 beginning the reading in verse 22. I'm sorry we'll read through verse 34, two additional verses.

0:54 And they bring him unto the place Golgotha, which is being interpreted the place of a skull. And they offered him wine mingled with myrrh, but he received it not. And they crucify him, and part his garments among them, casting lots upon them what each should take. And it was the third hour, and they crucified him.

1:24 The superscription of his accusation was written over the king of the Jews. And with him they crucify two robbers, one on his right hand and one on his left. And they that passed by railed on him, wagging their heads and saying, Ha, thou that destroyest the temple and buildest it in three days, save thyself and come down from the cross. In like manner also the chief priests mocking him among themselves with the scribes said he saved others, himself he cannot save.

2:09 Let the Christ, the King of Israel now come down from the cross that we may see and believe. They that were crucified with him reproached him and when the sixth hour was come there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour and at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice Eloi Eloi lama sabachthanai which is being interpreted my God my God why hast thou

2:55 forsaken me let us again seek the face of God in prayer God the Holy Spirit who has come to take of the things of Christ and reveal them to us may be unusually and effectually at work taking this central truth concerning Christ and bringing it home to our hearts with clarity and with power let us pray our father as we confessed in your presence last Lord's Day morning so we confess again that we feel the pressure of your words to Moses standing

3:40 by the burning bush put off the shoes from your feet for the place where on you stand is holy ground. And as we with our mind's eye are drawn by the text of scripture to stand there at the place of a skull, to stand at Golgotha, there to behold and to hear the scenes described by the Holy Spirit's penman, Mark, we pray that the same Spirit who guided him to pen the words may be present and mightily operative in this very room this morning to take those words and to give us

4:29 an accurate understanding of them though we know we can never have an exhaustive insight into them. And then, O Lord, having given us an accurate understanding of them Grant us an appropriate response of mind, of heart, and of will. Hear us, we plead, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

5:05 Those of you at all familiar with the various gospel records will remember that we have in the Gospel of John early in the life of our Lord Jesus that incident in which John the Baptist pointed to the Lord Jesus Christ and said, Behold the Lamb of God who is bearing away the sin of the world. There he was in the circumstances of any ordinary Palestinian, and yet standing in the place where John was baptizing, he described him not as the Lamb of God who would at some future date bear away the sin of the world,

5:59 but he identified him as the Lamb of God who is presently bearing the sin of the world. And in a very real sense, his identity and work as the sin bearer is coextensive with his whole life of incarnation and humiliation. from his conception in Mary's womb to his burial in Joseph's tomb. However, it is in connection with three particular places, each of which begins with the letter G,

6:45 that his work as sin-bearer comes to its heightened expression and to its final completion. It is in conjunction with Gethsemane, with Gabbatha, and with Golgotha. It is in Gethsemane you will remember that the cup of what it would mean for him to be the sin bearer in actually experiencing the wrath of God is held before him. And before that cup our Lord shrinks.

7:25 And before that cup he agonizes and wrestles. Until strengthened by an angel he is sent forth to undergo those events. Which will lead to the cup not merely being placed before him. But the cup being taken by him voluntarily.

7:46 and drunk until every last drop is gone. Gabbatha, the place of mockery and scourging before Pilate as it is designated for us in John's Gospel. The place we have seen where he was taunted, where he was buffeted with human fists until his face was a mass of contusions. the place where his back was lacerated with the scourging the place where his brow was pierced by the thorns in false coronation and in the mockery subsequent to that coronation

8:33 and then as we have seen it is at Golgotha the place of crucifixion where the outpoured wrath of men, of devils, and of God all come down upon our Lord and crush Him in the jaws of the death of all deaths as He pours out His life's blood, a sacrifice for sinners. now in our attempt to open up Mark 15 verses 24 to 32 last Lord's Day we had occasion to focus our attention upon what I sought to summarize in this paragraph

Transition from Mockery by Men to Abandonment by God

9:19 as the crucifixion and the mockery at the hands of men For the emphasis of verses 24 through 32 is the emphasis of passing over with very little detail the facts of the actual impaling of the incarnate God upon this instrument of Roman execution. and the amplification comes in terms of the mockery, the blasphemy, the reproach and the jeering that he received from the lips of evil men. And as we move this morning to a contemplation of verses 33 and 34, we move from the crucifixion and the subsequent mockery of men to a contemplation of the crucifixion and the abandonment by God.

10:27 Now the emphasis shifts from the treatment received at the hands of men having been crucified to the treatment he receives at the hands of God while being in the state of crucifixion. And as we come to these verses I freely confess what I trust is a sympathy that you have felt with me and I with you of mingled and conflicting motions of mind and soul when contemplating verses 33 and 34. On the one hand we are drawn to these verses by the wonder and the glory of the central realities of the gospel.

11:22 It is in these verses that we are taken to the very heart of the heart of the gospel. We are taken to the very soul of the soul of the gospel. And surely if we have come to receive life from a crucified Savior, we cannot help but be powerfully drawn, inexorably drawn, and desire to enter in more fully to the majesty and to the glory and wonder of the mystery of the gospel. And yet, while drawn on the one hand, we feel driven back on the other by the mystery of God, forsaken by God.

12:15 We're drawn back and we recoil by the sheer horror of what seems to be contained in a cry of utter dereliction. Forced up through the weakened body of Christ that marshals strength to let out a piercing loud cry. Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani. and if there is anything in the word of God that drives us back by its mystery and by its horrible majesty it is the cry of dereliction and yet this is the word of God

13:02 and the task of one called upon to preach it is to be faithful to that which is revealed and so with those mingled feelings of being drawn towards it and yet driven back by it. May we come in utter dependence upon the Holy Ghost to a place called Golgotha and there in dependence upon the Holy Spirit let us seek to enter in as far as is reverent with the text of Scripture before us to what it meant for our Lord to be abandoned by his Father. And as I attempt to open up these two verses in your hearing,

The Visible Context of the Abandonment: Supernatural Darkness

13:50 I shall do so along these three lines. First of all, we shall consider from verse 33 the visible context of the abandonment. The Holy Spirit draws our attention, first of all, to the visible context of the abandonment. Then secondly, to the vocal expression of the abandonment in verse 34.

14:17 And then thirdly, we shall consider the biblical explanation of the abandonment. First of all then, the visible context of the abandonment. and under this heading forced upon us by verse 33 I want to speak to the simple facts of that visible context and then the inevitable questions raised by those facts what are the simple facts concerning the visible context of the abandonment of our Lord the text tells us And when the sixth hour was come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.

15:09 According to the Jewish reckoning we are told by Mark inspired by the Holy Spirit that approximately from high noon 12 noon to 3 p.m. there was darkness over the whole land. that when the sun was at its zenith and therefore extending its brightest rays upon the earth there in Palestine when it normally would have been at the height of its visible and felt influence instead of the sun in its brightness

15:55 a horrible deep penetrating darkness settles upon the land for three whole hours. And when the sixth hour was come, 12 noon, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour, three in the afternoon. Those are the simple facts concerning the visible context of the abandonment of our Lord. And any dweller there in Palestine, no matter how besotten he may have been with unbelief,

16:41 no matter how flippant and indifferent to the events going on at Golgotha, one thing would be sure. He would have been struck with the horrible reality that something unusual had transpired when the light and brightness of the noonday sun turned into pitch black darkness, a darkness, as a Negro poet described it, darker than a hundred midnights down in a cypress swamp. But now that erases inevitably certain questions about this visible context Question one what caused it And while various theories have been advanced and believe it or not books have actually been written

17:35 supporting one theory or another as to precisely what caused the darkness, The most simple, the most satisfying answer and the one which accords best with the analogy of scripture is that this was a miraculous act of God. For Luke says that the light of the sun failed. That's how Luke describes the same event which we have set before us by Mark in verse 33. And like the other miracles recorded in conjunction with the crucifixion of our Lord,

18:22 The miracle of the splitting of the veil of the temple, which is recorded here in Mark's gospel. Other miracles, as recorded in the parallel passage in Matthew, such as the opening of the graves and the coming forth of some of the dead saints to life again, this was a miraculous intervention of Almighty God. but then the second inevitable question is not only what caused it but how extensive was it our text says there was darkness over the whole land and rightly so indicating that an interpretive judgment

19:09 has been exercised the American standard the old 1901 has a marginal rendering over the whole earth For the word translated land in some contexts, both in the New Testament and in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, the word has a breadth of meaning. And there are contexts in which it obviously refers to a very limited geographical area, sometimes to a rather extensive geographical area, sometimes literally to the entire earth as we know it. And so when the text tells us that darkness was over the whole land or the whole earth, the Spirit of God has used a word which has a flexibility of meaning.

20:08 and to my understanding, he has given us no parallel information to state with dogmatism whether or not it was as extensive as that part of the earth, which at that part of the day was under the influence of the sun, or whether it refers just to Palestine. But one thing is clear. The Holy Spirit does use this qualifying word, there was darkness not simply over the land, but over the whole land. so that certainly we are warranted to assume that in the area of Palestine, where these events took place,

20:56 no one could be present in Palestine and its immediate environs on that day, and not be conscious that there was an unusual divine intervention in the powers of the heavens. It could not have been an eclipse, and that for two reasons. Passover was held at the time of the full moon, and eclipses do not last for three hours. They are temporary in their obscuring of the light of the sun.

21:29 So here we have a description of the visible context. a deep and a horrible darkness came over the whole land for approximately the space of three hours. Our Lord had already been upon the cross since approximately the ninth hour. And during those first three hours he experienced primarily all of the cumulative agonies of body and of mind that any ordinary human being would have experienced in crucifixion.

22:09 Added to that were the peculiar tortures to him who was the sinless Son of God. Added to that the cumulative impact of all of the taunting which we contemplated in our meditation last Lord's Day. And then after three hours of being impaled upon the cross, suddenly our Lord, the soldiers, those who taunt him, the thieves crucified with him to the left hand and the right, there in all of that area of Palestine, if not more extensively, by a miraculous intervention of God. Midday is turned into a dark midnight

The Vocal Expression of the Abandonment: Jesus's Loud Cry

22:57 As dark as a night in which the moon does not shed its light And the stars are hidden from our view by the cover of cloud That then is the visible context of the abandonment Now notice with me, secondly, the vocal expressions of the abandonment. God begins with the visible context, then he goes on to set before us in verse 34, the vocal expressions of the abandonment. And three things are highlighted and affirmed in the text.

23:44 when these expressions occurred, how they were made, and what precisely was the cry of abandonment. So with reference then to the vocal expression of the abandonment, we have when, how, and what. First of all then, when was the cry made? Verse 34.

24:14 And at the ninth hour Jesus cried. Matthew says about the ninth hour. So we are not to assume that there was a sundial set before our Lord and that his eyes were glued upon it and precisely at 3 p.m. the cry issued.

24:41 But what is underscored by the language of Mark and of Matthew is that this cry was made not at the beginning of this physical context of external visible darkness. but it was on the tail end in the last segment if not the very last minutes of the three hours of darkness it was precisely at that time toward the end of the period of darkness that the cry of abandonment was uttered

25:27 And if you ask the question, what was done and what was said in those hours of darkness, I must respond by saying, one of the marks of faith is that embraces in believing trustful submission the silences of God as well as the utterances of God. When then was the cry made? At the ninth hour. The second question of this vocal expression of abandonment, not only when was it made, but how was the cry made?

26:04 And Mark is careful to emphasize that the cry was not the cry of a muffled moan, nor was it merely a word spoken in tone sufficient for the immediate attendance about the cross to hear them. there is no reason to assume from Mark, from Luke's record of our Lord's interaction with the dying thieves that when the one thief said to the other, do you not fear God seeing you are coming to the same condemnation there is no reason to believe he spoke any more loudly than was necessary than for his fellow thief to hear him And when our Lord Jesus spoke to the penitent dying thief and said, today you shall be with me in paradise, there is nothing in the text or in what we would call common ordinary human experience to assume or presume,

27:09 let alone to somehow say there had to be any more intensity of verbal expression than was necessary amidst the murmur that any milling crowd makes. He spoke loud enough for the penitent thief to hear his words of absolution and assurance that that very day he would be with him in paradise. But now with reference to the cry of dereliction, the Holy Spirit is much more specific. Look at the text.

27:47 And at the ninth hour, or in the language of Matthew about the ninth hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice. We get our word megaphone from the word translated here loud. A man makes mega bucks, big bucks. A certain nuclear piece of armament has so many megatons of explosive power, big tons, lots of them.

28:23 And Jesus is said not only to have cried, but to have cried with a loud voice. Now remember the circumstances of crucifixion. As I sought with chastened mind and restraint I trust to describe the bare facts. No little part of the agony of that form of Roman execution was its effect upon the ability of the crucified criminal to breathe.

28:58 For as the weight of the body sunk downward, the ability of the lungs to function was greatly impeded. Therefore they would push upward upon the pierced feet, sufficiently to draw in enough breath simply to breathe and to maintain life. and for any of us who have done any preaching or speaking in a context where we know that a loud voice is needed to make a cry reach a great distance whether it's seeing a child two or three hundred yards away in a place of imminent danger or simply to call the child from a neighbor's place

29:43 halfway down the block that to do anything with a loud voice is a matter that means we must marshal tremendous physical strength. The lungs must be filled with air. There must be the contraction of the whole wall of the stomach muscles and the action of the diaphragm. And to cry with a loud voice is an act of tremendous physical exertion.

30:12 And our text tells us that the vocal expression of the cry of abandonment was not only made towards the end of another three hours of the wearing, debilitating influences of crucifixion, but that when it was made it was not uttered as a muffled moan it was a cry with a great voice and precisely what was the cry well in what is regarded by the commentators

30:58 as a mixture of Hebrew and Aramaic Matthew giving us more of the Hebrew in the address Eli Eli Mark giving us the Aramaic that cousin language to Hebrew Eloi Eloi and then the Lama Sabachanai being a slightly altered Hebrew construction in Aramaic of the Hebrew that in these words what we have is the very focus of the cry of abandonment. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani, which is being interpreted, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

31:53 What precisely was the cry? Well, the cry was first of all directed to God as his God. Therefore, any thought of total despair must be utterly removed from our very threshold efforts to penetrate into the mystery of this cry. Though he does not cry as he did in the agony of Gethsemane, Abba, Father, is it possible to remove this cup?

32:28 Though the sense of the intimacy of filial relationship with the Father was radically altered, It is not a cry, oh God, oh God, have you utterly vacated the universe. It is a cry in which he owns God to be his God even in the mystery and the agony of abandonment. It is my God, my God. And he clings to the great reality that God is his God.

33:04 even in the midst of the abandonment. But the focus of the cry then is not to be upon any intrusion of any thought that this was a cry of utter despair, but it is a cry that focuses upon the cause of the abandonment. The words rendered by the single English word Y are words in which we have a preposition and an adjective. And when placed together, they mean to what purpose, for what cause, unto what end have you forsaken me?

33:52 And the word forsaken is the very word used in 2 Corinthians 4, 9 when the apostle, speaking of the paradoxes of his experience as a gospel minister said, pursued, yet not forsaken, abandoned, left behind. It's the word used of Demas, 2 Timothy 4 and verse 10. Demas hath forsaken me. Demas has abandoned me Demas has left me having loved this present evil age and it's the word used in that wonderful promise

34:39 of Hebrews 13 5 I will never leave thee nor forsake thee I will never leave thee nor abandon thee And so as we try precisely to grasp the language of the cry we turn away from any thought of it being in any way connected with a cry of utter despair or unbelief It is one in which he owns God as his God, but the focus is upon to what purpose, for what cause, unto what end have you abandoned me? That's why it is called the cry of dereliction. We hear about the derelicts and the homeless in our great cities.

35:28 What is a derelict? Someone utterly abandoned. No one wants to claim him as dad, as brother, as sister, as son or daughter. And so it is called the cry of dereliction, the cry of abandonment.

Biblical Explanation of the Context: Darkness as God's Judgment

35:45 In summary then we can say that in the physical context of great darkness, a darkness which enveloped the land for three hours, towards the end of that time period, a piercing, loud cry split what may well have been an awed silence before this supernatural darkness, a cry of dereliction and abandonment. Now having sought to open up the meaning of the words of the text as to the visible context of the abandonment, The vocal expressions of the abandoned, we come now thirdly to consider the biblical explanation of the abandonment.

36:38 The biblical explanation of the abandonment. And as I come to this part in our study this morning, I am most conscious of the desire to draw back from the mystery. It is reported, and I have no reason to doubt the report, it may come from Daubigné's history of the Reformation, though I am not certain of that, that on one occasion the great Martin Luther sat at his desk with his Bible open to these words. and it is said that for approximately three hours he lived with the words describing the darkness of the three hours

37:26 and his mind was focused upon the cry uttered toward the end of the three hours my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Luther is reported at the end of an approximate three hour period of meditation upon those words suddenly to have risen up from his posture of meditation pushed himself back from his desk throw his hands up in despair and cry God! Forsaken by God! Who can fathom such a mystery?

38:10 And dear people, there's a sense in which I would like to simply do what Luther did and dismiss you and send you home and say you ponder the mystery God forsaken by God who can fathom the mystery and yet it is at this point we can be so thankful that we do not merely have Mark's terse account of the physical context of the abandonment the vocal expressions of that abandonment that we have the rest of our Bibles to explain the abandonment.

38:58 And what I want to do for the next moments is first of all to concentrate on the biblical explanation of the context of the abandonment and then the biblical explanation of the cry of abandonment for God has joined these two. It is the context that leads us into the mystery of the cry, and it is the cry that is validated by the context. And so the darkness and the voice joined together in the text are expounded as we contemplate them in tandem. First of all then, what is the biblical explanation of the context of the abandonment?

39:43 That is, what is the explanation of this supernatural imposition of the darkness of midnight at the brightness of noonday and that for a period of three hours? well if one thing is clear in the word of God and thank God many things are this is a principle which stands among the clear and the undisputed things that are taught by what we call the analogy of scripture that is the general teaching of the word of God brought together and shedding its light on a given issue And that which is clearly taught is that darkness, especially supernaturally wrought, unnatural darkness, is a symbol of the judgment and the wrath of God.

40:48 Do you remember how clearly this was expressed in the plagues upon Egypt? When God is bringing judgment upon the Egyptian gods and upon Pharaoh with a view to seeing his own people released. Do you remember what the last judgment was prior to the death of the firstborn that became the occasion of Pharaoh releasing God's people? It was a plague of darkness.

41:20 And I read from Exodus 10 verses 21 to 23. And the Lord said unto Moses, Stretch out thy hand toward heaven, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt. Now notice, even darkness which may be felt. a darkness that had about it an eerie and a honking throbbing sense of something that was more than an ordinary darkness and Moses stretched forth his hand toward heaven and there was a thick darkness in all the land of Egypt three days

42:07 and they saw not one another neither rose any from his place For three days this darkness was so frightening. This darkness was so eerie that men entered a kind of three day paralysis.

42:23 But now notice, but all the children of Israel had light in their dwellings. that God made it very plain that this was a supernatural darkness limited in its scope and particularly focused in its purpose and it was obviously one of those judgments upon Egypt what is true in the Pentateuch becomes abundantly clear in the prophets though we could cite many verses in which the prophets indicate that darkness is a symbol of the outpouring of God's judgment, whether upon the nations in general or upon his people in particular. We could turn to Isaiah 5.30,

43:09 Isaiah 60 and verse 2, Amos 5, verses 18 and 20, but let me refer you to just two references in the prophets, Amos 8, verses 9 and 10. Amos 8, verses 9 and 10. Amos 8 and verse 9 speaking of the day of God and it shall come to pass in that day saith the Lord Jehovah that I will cause the sun to go down at noon you see what God is saying under the figure of a most unusual judgment in which the sun sets at high noon.

43:59 Do you see any parallels? From noon until 3 p.m. there was darkness.

44:07 I will cause the sun to go down at noon. I will darken the earth in a clear day. I will turn your feast into mourning and all your songs into lamentations. And I will bring sackcloth upon all loins and baldness upon every head and I will make it as the morning for an only sun and the end thereof is a bitter day.

44:33 Here God is saying that his judgments will come and they will come with such fierceness that it will be as jarring and upsetting and unhinging as the sun setting at noon and the earth being plunged into darkness. and then in the book of Zephaniah how often do we quote from Zephaniah we have the old American standard that's page 927 and in Zephaniah we read in chapter 1 verses 14 and following the great day of Jehovah is near it is near and haste greatly even the voice of the day of Jehovah

45:20 the mighty man crieth there bitterly that there is a day of wrath a day of trouble and distress a day of wasteness and desolation a day of darkness and gloominess a day of clouds and thick darkness and one reads on to see that the whole context is the overflowing judgment of God And the imagery used to picture that judgment is that God will shroud men in the darkness of his own creation. Now that emphasis is not only found in the Pentateuch, in the judgments upon Egypt, in the imagery of the prophets speaking of judgment, but it's found in the very words of our Lord Jesus.

46:14 for you'll remember in Matthew 8 in verse 12 when he's describing the consummate glory of the kingdom and the final day of separation he does so in these terms speaking to his own generation Matthew 8 in verse 12 I say unto you verse 11 many shall come from the east and the west and shall sit down with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven but the sons of the kingdom shall be cast forth into the outer darkness. There, in the place of outer darkness, there shall be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth.

46:59 And in our very Gospel of Mark, if you can remember back to chapter 13 in the Olivet Discourse, as our Lord is describing the cataclysmic events that will occur surrounding the coming of the Lord of glory in judgment upon the wicked and to glorify the saints. What is the imagery of that judgment? Verse 24 of Mark 13. But in those days after that tribulation the sun shall be darkened and the moon shall not give her light and the stars shall be falling from heaven and the powers that are in the heavens shall be shaken and then shall they see the Son of Man coming.

47:46 Our Lord coming in glory for the consummate redemption of his own and the final judgment of the wicked. He comes in judgment with reference to darkness, the blocking out of the light of the sun, of the moon, and of the stars. And this is true of the apostles. I'll not take the time for you to turn to the passages, But 2 Peter chapter 2 and verse 17, we find the phrase, for whom is reserved, the blackness of darkness forever.

48:22 What a horrible description of hell. The blackness of darkness forever. We find the same emphasis in the book of the Revelation when John writes the things he has seen and heard. There is the same connection between supernaturally imposed darkness and the judgment of God.

48:46 Revelation 6, verses 12 and following. And I saw when he opened the sixth seal and there was a great earthquake. And the sun became black as sackcloth of hair. And the moon became his blood and the stars of the heaven fell unto the earth.

49:04 and then the verses go on to describe the final day of judgment as men cry for rocks and hills to fall upon them. Now, why have I taken seven or eight minutes of precious preaching, teaching time to go literally from Genesis to Revelation? Well, my friend, for the simple reason that when we read Mark, there is no explicit explanation of that context of the cry of abandonment. The darkness is described but is unexplained.

49:43 But there is a connection. And turning to the rest of Scripture, I trust I have established and demonstrated to the conviction of your own judgment and mind that the significance of that context of abandonment is to demonstrate that whatever is happening in the supernatural darkness from high noon to 3 p.m., God has come forth for a unique and concentrated work of judgment.

Biblical Explanation of the Cry: What it Did Not Mean

50:22 And I trust you are convinced of that. That moves us then to the biblical explanation of the cry of abandonment. In the context of darkness symbolizing God's intervention in judgment, what does the cry of abandonment mean? Well, let me say quickly what it did not mean.

50:47 When Jesus cried, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? It does not indicate that Jesus weakened under the combined pressures of body and soul To the point of unbelief If so, there are martyrs among mere human beings Who were more noble in suffering and in martyrdom than was Jesus For there were martyrs who did not cry out of any sense of abandonment whatsoever But they testified to the sweetness of the flames and embraced them in ways that caused their enemies to gnash their teeth and to be astounded.

51:32 So the cry of abandonment does not mean that Jesus was weakened in faith and was nearing a point of despair through unbelief. Nor does it mean, why have you given me up to men's worst treatment? No, he went there voluntarily. All through every step that is led to the cross, we have seen.

51:58 Jesus knew what was to happen. He deliberately went forth to those events. And then he thought that he's saying, God, why have you abandoned me? Why have you left me unprotected?

52:09 Look what men have done That thought must never enter our mind as even a remote possibility of the meaning of the cry of abandonment

52:21 Nor does it mean that the infinite, eternal, mysterious bond of love between father and son was for a brief time snapped, suspended, or severed. Jesus said therefore doth my father love me because I lay down my life for the sheep Jesus was never more loved of the father in his person than when he made the cry of abandonment for his obedience to the father had reached its apex He became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Therefore, doth my Father love me.

53:08 What then is the biblical explanation of the cry of abandonment? If it was not the cry of weakened faith or of blatant unbelief, if it was not the cry of complaint that he had been left vulnerable and unprotected, if it was not the cry indicative of a snap, suspended, or severed relationship of the bond of love between the Father and the Son in the mystery of inter-trinitarian communion, life, and fellowship. What did it mean?

Biblical Explanation of the Cry: The Sequel to Gethsemane's Cup

53:43 Well, I think the best way to seek, to begin, to attempt, to explain. Do you hear my words? I think that the best way to seek, to begin, to attempt, to explain is to see the cry as the sequel and the final exegesis of the cup of Gethsemane. I have found nothing more helpful to keep my mind from irreverent speculation and yet to keep it from total paralysis nothing has been more helpful

54:31 than to view the cry of dereliction as the inevitable sequel to the cup in Gethsemane There in Gethsemane a cup is presented to our Lord And it is our Lord's facing that cup Looking into the cup That causes him to fall upon the ground In a great agony of prayer Until some of the capillaries burst And blood is mingled with sweat And congeals in the night air And drops down to the ground And the great cry is, if it be possible, let the cup pass. Oh, my father, if it cannot pass except I drink it, not thy will be done upon me, but thy will be done by me.

55:25 I will, I shall, I must drink the cup. And what was that cup? But we saw when we studied Gethsemane from the analogy of scripture, that that cup was the wrath of God filled to the brim. In his righteous recoil against the sins of the people for whom Jesus would be substitute in surety.

55:51 For whom he was already substitute in surety. and in which capacity he would actually in space-time history not merely look at the cup, look into the cup, recoil from the cup and yet say, thy will be done, that is, I shall drink it but in space-time history the cup is put to his lips and he is not force-fed but he willingly voluntarily drinks in the full measure of the cup of God's wrath so that in his experience two texts of scripture are being fulfilled. I refer you to 2 Corinthians 5.21

56:39 2 Corinthians 5 and verse 21 him who knew no sin that is this person Jesus of Nazareth described by Mark as shrouded in the darkness along with the thieves and the soldiers who put him to death and the scribes and their Pharisees who taunted and mocked him in the milling crowds that one knew No sin, that is, in the very depths of all that he was as the incarnate God. There was no stain of sin in his nature.

57:27 There was no sin in his actual experience. Not once had his pure and holy mind known even the toe print of a sin upon its walls and its chambers. Not once was his tongue ever guilty of even the slightest deviation from truth, from kindness, from love. Not once did his hands touch a forbidden object, his feet walk in a forbidden path, and positively those hands took up everything the Father's law demanded.

58:07 Those feet went everywhere, the Father's will revealed, that heart beat with every beat in doing the will of the Father. And yet that one who knew no sin, he, God the Father, made sin on our behalf. And in what sense did he make him sin? That we might become the righteousness of God in him.

58:40 There is a righteousness imputed, put to our account, reckoned as ours. but a righteousness that is not natively ours but is as much ours as though it were natively ours by divine imputation.

59:00 And so the Bible is not at all fastidious to say that Jesus Christ became so identified with the sins of his people while through that ordeal never knowing sin in the sense in which I've explained Not one atom of his soul, not one atom of his whole, holy, mysterious being as the God-man in the two distinct natures joined in the one person forever. While knowing no sin up to and upon and subsequent to the cross, he is reckoned sin. he is treated in the court of heaven and in the great economy of redemption

59:47 as sin itself and as our sins are reckoned his the father then does what Galatians 3.13 tells us here I let scripture answer the question of the cry of the abandonment Galatians chapter 3 and verse 3 I'm sorry verse 13 Galatians 3 13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law having become a curse for

60:34 us for it is written cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree.

60:46 What did the cry of abandonment mean? When without any unbelief, which means he would have known sin. Unbelief is a wicked sin. We've just read about it in Hebrews.

61:00 Unbelief shuts a man out from all the promises of God. His cry was not a cry of unbelief. he owned God to be his God, hear me now, even when every vestige of the felt enjoyment of God which he had known uninterrupted from eternity, pre-incarnate and post-incarnate, He had never known a millisecond without a felt delight of the Father's communion. and now while stripped of every felt reality of that communion

61:47 and made to feel in his own soul utter abandonment as the God-man with perfect faith he does not regard reality by what he feels And therefore he says, my God. Oh, again the heroism of the faith of Jesus. With nothing but oceans of wrath pouring over him out of the cup. My God.

62:22 My God. He holds to the integrity of that undisrupted relationship to his God. while feeling nothing but the frown, the wrath, the malediction, the curse of the broken law. It is here in the language of Isaiah 53 that it pleased the Lord to bruise him.

62:52 It is here that he makes to light upon him the iniquity of us all. It is here that Jehovah lifts up his rod and brings it down upon his son.

63:09 In the garden he cries, Abba, Father. God hears and strengthens him. On the cross he cries, My God, My God. And God turns away from him.

Illustration: Father's Love and Abandonment of a Leprous Son

63:28 And as I fished and prayed and thought and said, Lord, is it even irreverent to try to give an illustration how at one and the same moment Jesus was never more loved of the Father in terms of inner Trinitarian mystery of mysteries and yet abandoned by the Father. I trust I'm not irreverent. To close with this illustration and all of the five strands of application I'd hope to bring will have to wait till next Lord's Day. God willing and God sparing us.

64:04 But I thought of this illustration as impoverished as it is. Perhaps it will help you. Here is a father.

64:13 And God has withheld other children. And he has only one son. He waited perhaps 15 years into marriage. He thought his wife and himself were going to be unable to bear children.

64:25 and God gave them a son long into their marriage. This son became the darling of his eye, the dear of his heart.

64:35 And one of the circumstances of this relationship is they lived back in the days when they knew how to do only one thing with people who were discovered to have leprosy. And that was to take them off to leper colonies. Cut them off from all communion and interaction with non-leprous people. can you imagine what that father would feel if upon the discovery of the leprosy because of the disease that clung to the very being of that boy he had to have him banished to a leper colony at the height of his cultivated relationship and love to that boy for what clings to him he had to abandon him to a leper colony

65:22 but it did not affect in one measure the depth of the law by which he was bound to the very one he had to consign to a leper colony I say it's but an impoverished illustration but can it help you at least to perceive the edges of the mystery never more loved than when in obedience to the Father he has the cup in his hands he's turned it up and in a unique way to symbolize judgment is being poured into his soul God shrouds the whole area in that blackness darker than a hundred midnights

66:08 down in a cypress swamp And because of the sin that clings to him, not by personal commission or by defilement, but by divine imputation and willing acceptation, he stands as our surety. And the wrath that should be ours becomes his. And in the felt consciousness of that wrath. Searing through his soul in a unique way through those three hours.

66:43 Even the Son of God upheld by divine enablement. Could bear the inner pressure no longer. Until toward the end of the three hours. marshalling all the strength from that waning, weakening residue of physical strength.

67:02 He fills his lungs. He contracts his stomach muscles. He hurls out the cry from a pressure that only God can fathom. My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?

Conclusion: The Gospel of Christ's Substitutionary Curse

67:22 The answer is Because I am making you a curse That curse deserving sinners Might go free My friends that's the gospel That's the gospel The gospel is not that in some woozy undefined way We've blown it, made a mess of it but God's indulgent and somehow Jesus is connected with the proof of his indulgence. No! This is the gospel by which you are saved. If you hold fast to it, Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures.

68:14 The reality is found in his cry. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? As I said, God willing, next week we will take up such questions as what this reveals about the character of God, the nature of sin, the horrors of hell, the only hope for sinners, and the measure of gratitude every saved sinner ought to have. To the Lord Jesus.

68:51 Let us pray.

68:56 Our Father.

68:59 We confess at the close. What we confessed at the beginning. That we have stood upon holy ground this morning.

69:09 We have sought to expound. To explain. To illustrate. Through God all of our efforts.

69:19 We feel to have been so inadequate, so far from the realities to which they've been directed. But will you not by the Spirit and the Word speak and grant that this day some may bow before this glorious Savior and own Him as their own. hear our cry dismiss us with your blessing for Jesus sake Amen