Palmarum Wednesday - Devotions in Exile The Fourth Word of Christ from the Cross
Palmarum Wednesday - Devotions in Exile
The Fourth Word of Christ from the Cross
Forsaken For Our Sake
Matthew
27:46 And about the ninth hour Jesus
cried out with a loud voice, saying, "Eli, Eli, lama
sabachtani?" that is "My God,
My God, why have You forsaken Me?"
How many fathers would leave their
only child – the child they love – in the middle of train tracks and unable to
move, with a train coming? None would! Yet, that is exactly what God did. God the
Father knew what was coming, indeed, you might say that He tied up His only
begotten Son so that He might not even move Himself out of the way of the train
that was coming. You remember how Jesus had prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane,
“Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but
Yours be done.” (Lk. 22:42)
It
was the will of the Father to give up His only Son to death. He gave Him up not
just to any death, but to the death of being cursed on a tree. Yes, cursed on a
tree. God spoke to Israel giving this command,“If a man has committed a sin
deserving of death, and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his
body shall not remain overnight on the tree, but you shall surely bury him that
day, so that you do not defile the land which the Lord your God is giving you
as an inheritance; for he who is hanged is accursed of God.” (Deut. 21:23)
When
looking at these words of our Lord in conjunction with all of God's Word recorded
in Scripture, we see the answer to the question Jesus asks from the cross. It
is all about you! It is all about me! It is all about every person born of the
seed of Adam…as sinners we deserves the wages of sin. As sinners, we deserve
death, we deserve to be cursed, that is, we deserve eternal separation from
God. That is what it means to be
accursed of God, cut off from God for eternity. We deserve to be forsaken by
God.
Now you see the love that God had (has)
for us. He was willing to sacrifice His own Son for you. The Father wills that
the Son pays the price for our sinfulness, He allows Him to endure what we
deserve. As the Son took into His own flesh our sins and the curse that we
deserve, the Father forsook Him on the cross.
God turned His back on His only begotten
Son that day on the cross so that you would not be forsaken for eternity. He
loved His Son, but God's love for you, even in your sinfulness is just as
great.
I know that somewhere in your thoughts
you have wondered (maybe you even said it out loud) why has God forsaken us?
Why has God allowed this plague to come upon us? What did we do to deserved to
be confined, forsaken to be alone, and to be so terrified as to not know what
is coming next?
We could talk about our sinfulness,
and what we truly deserve from God, and the coronavirus would be a fitting, if
not even a bit mild form or punishment for our sins.
But you are not forsaken by God. God
allowed His only Son to suffer on that cross to pay the price for your sinful
condition – and mine. We are unable to save ourselves from our own sins, so the
ransom price had to be paid for us, God’s own Son paid that ransom price. He
was forsaken that we might never be.
What a remarkable sacrifice God made! He
made that sacrifice for you – out of love for you. He did this for you that you
might be His own dearly loved child now, and for eternity.
Gratefully, we can come before our
Father in heaven and thank Him for His love for us. We can beg Him to give us
strength in these days. Seeing our Father's actions toward Christ in this
light, gives us a true understanding of His awesome love for us. But God
demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ
died for us. (Rom.
5:8) Christ was forsaken by His Father for our sake – for you sake.
God truly desires our presence with
Him for eternity, for which we gladly give thanks and praise to His Holy Name.
PRAYER: Lord God, Heavenly Father, let me ever see
Your love for me with open eyes, that You gave your only begotten Son as the
atoning sacrifice for me. Thank you for
making me one of Your chosen heirs of heaven through Christ Jesus. Amen
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