Summary
Pastor Safrit walks through Matthew 27:45-49, focusing on Jesus' cry, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" He emphasizes that feelings of abandonment can lead us to seek God for answers. The sermon highlights the seriousness of sin, the substitution Jesus made for humanity, and the importance of trusting in God's word during difficult times. Ultimately, Jesus' forsakenness allows believers to experience forgiveness and a personal relationship with God.
Welcome and Church Information
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Thank you, choir, for singing. This has been an incredible study for me. We're halfway through the final words of Jesus. If you have your Bibles, we're going to be in Matthew chapter 27, verses 45 through 49.
Your notes have a different, I did have a typo, I did have an error here. Most people catch my errors, I normally don't ever catch them.
At the top it says 54 through 49, it's 45 through 49, so if you want to mark that and change it, that'd be great.
But we're looking at the final words of Jesus in this series, and we're looking at what He said on the cross, and how we can take this as words of encouragement, words of hope, words of enlightenment as we
study through this. The first week we looked at the words, Father, forgive them. And we see that when we have been hurt by others, we can offer forgiveness.
The Bible continued on, and His second phrase was, Today you'll be with me in paradise. And when we're in pain, we can give hope to others as well. And then two weeks ago, we looked at the statement, Father, into your hands I entrust my spirit. And when you're at your wit's end,
ultimately we need to surrender back to God. And so today, we're looking at the phrase, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
As we've done in weeks past, I want to pull out some famous last words of people that you may or may not know. And so the last words of a lady in the 20s, she was called the Empress of Blues Music.
Her name was Bessie Smith. Her last words were, I'm going, but I'm going in the name of the Lord. And she was a famous, famous, I never heard any of her music, but apparently she was really famous. The last words of the Italian artist Raphael, One simple word, happy.
He went away saying the word happy. And the last words of a guy named Guy de Malpiste, I believe how it is. He's a 19th century French author. He said this, I have coveted everything and taken pleasure in nothing.
And then breathed his last breath. And so as we look at this passage of scripture here in Matthew chapter 27, you can stand with us if you are willing and able, and we'll read these couple of verses and get our text this morning. The Bible says, From noon until three in the afternoon.
So for three hours, darkness came over the whole land.
Jesus' Cry of Forsakenness
At about three in the afternoon, Jesus cried out with a loud voice, That is, Verse 47, And when those who were standing around heard this, They said, He is calling for Elijah.
And immediately one of them ran and got a sponge and filled it with sour wine and put it on a stick to offer him to drink. But the rest said, Let's see if Elijah comes to save him. Father, we love you.
We thank you for what you've done. And I pray, That you would be with the words that we've read. Be with the sermon that we're going to preach. Help it to encourage our heart. Help it to allow understanding in our life as we grow closer to you. In your name we pray. Amen.
You can be seated. My subtext today is, When you feel alone, Seek God for answers. When you feel alone,
Seek God for answers. The word forsaken here means deserted, rejected, or abandoned.
As I was thinking through this thought, And I was thinking through the word abandoned, My mind went to this simple thought. Nothing hurts more in life than being abandoned.
Think about it. You're at your hardest moment in life, And you call your best friend, And they don't pick up. And you're abandoned.
You go to see someone, Maybe at their house, And you pull in, And their car's not there, Because maybe they were just running an errand, And you feel abandoned. When have you feel abandoned in your life?
When is it the moment that you were, Maybe at your darkest, Deepest moment in life, And you turned for the person that you thought you could turn to, And you thought, They've abandoned me. They're not here. This is Jesus in this moment. He said, My God,
My God, Why have you abandoned me? Why aren't you there?
And oftentimes we feel abandoned in life. There's two types of loneliness that we go through in life, And in these different circumstances. The first is this, Social loneliness. This occurs when we're isolated from friends and family. This could have been you three or four years ago during COVID,
Where you were isolated, You could not go and see a loved one, You could not go and see a family member, Because out of ultimate safety and security, You were just afraid.
I can remember back that Christmas that year, And how awkward it was, And how different it was, And how the in-laws came in, And they had gotten sick, And so everything of that year of Christmas was just chaotic.
And we almost left, And we were like, Man, This is just, It's just awkward. It's weird.
We feel like we're every little thing, We're walking on eggshells, Because we were isolated. There's social loneliness, There's also emotional loneliness. This occurs when we have no one to share our deepest concerns, Our struggles, And our joys. We begin to be emotionally lonely. We don't have that person.
Maybe you're a widow or a widower this morning, And you've always went to that person that you go to, And I was even talking with Mim just a couple days ago. She said she'll walk around the house, And she'll talk to Tim.
And she's like, He's not here, But I've talked to him because I'm just so used to it. And this is often how it is when emotional loneliness happens.
We, Our deepest concerns are not there, And we can't go to that person to share it with. And ultimately, This eventually can happen to all of us.
Jesus' Humanity and Suffering
The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 5, He knows what it feels like to have his own brother deny that he was the son of God. He knows what it feels like to have everyone around him mock and abuse and betray him. And yet, he can relate to me and you.
There's a song out by Stuart Townsend. It's an old song. Michaela sang it just the other day. I want to read these words to you because I want it to be impressed in your mind, The thoughts here, How deep the Father's love for us. How vast beyond all measure.
That he should give his only son to make a wretch his treasure.
We're the wretch. And we're the treasure of God. How great the pain of searing loss. The Father turns his face away. As wounds which mar the chosen one, Bring many sons to glory.
I want to set the scene here as we get ready to go into this message. This was 3 o'clock in the afternoon. One of the brightest times of all the day. And the crowd had begun to grow weary in mocking who Jesus was. The darkness had quieted the crowd at this moment.
The Bible, most scholars believe they could not see in front of them. It was so dark.
There would not have been street lights. There would not have been flashlights that you could have pulled out on your phone To be able to shine up and see the ones that were being crucified. But there were complete darkness in the midday of the sun. And Jesus hanging there on the cross.
Some of the crowd had begun to settle in. And they were waiting for this dying man to actually die and pass away. And out of the darkness,
You could almost hear this moment of quietness being shaken.
And by the sound of a man in this black atmosphere yelling out, My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?
Charles Spurgeon says that anyone hearing the voice of Jesus crying out in the darkness Could never forget what they just heard. And they would have lived the rest of their life knowing what they heard that day. He was forsaken church so that you and I could be forgiven.
That's why Jesus was forsaken. He was forsaken so that your sins and my sins could be erased.
And he was covered by darkness. The suffering upon the weight of these sins were on him. And he was enclosed in the storm of pain and loneliness to die for you and me. To die for our sins. Do you remember the weight of your sin? Before you came to know Jesus?
The Weight of Sin
Or even when we go through life and we have sin in our life and the guilt and the pain and the shame that's on our life. That was placed on Jesus. And he sat there in this moment of darkness asking this question, God, where are you?
I think it's amazing because Jesus asks a question. And it helps us to know that we can ask questions as well. And so how can we understand this? I've got four simple thoughts and we'll rush through this a little bit. The Bible says this. As we look through this, these words, how can they help us? They're words of inspiration.
These are words as he's speaking here. He's speaking from the Old Testament and he's actually quoting Psalms chapter 22.
Psalms 22. If you want to write this down, maybe off to the side and look at it later. I'm going to read a couple of these verses that says,
and listen to the similarities. You ready? My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?
Why are you so far from my deliverance and from my words of groaning? My God, I cried by day,
but you didn't answer. And by night you have not rested, but you were holy, enthroned on praises of Israel. Our ancestors trusted in you.
They trusted and you rescued them. They cried to you and you were set free. They trusted in you and you were not disgraced. And you can see the pain of Jesus as he's quoting this psalm.
He's saying, my God, you didn't forsake Israel, but now you've forsaken me. You've forsaken me in my hardest day. You see, Jesus purposely spoke this because he was speaking of his life, his rejection, his death, and ultimately his resurrection.
He was quoting this because he knew that this was the reason for his death.
And this is why he felt deserted because of you and me.
And we can be inspired by the words of the Lord this morning. You and I can learn a couple of lessons. The first one is this.
We can learn to trust and to turn, I'm sorry, to turn to the word of God.
This isn't in your notes, but you can sort of think about this. You can, when struggles come and when heartaches come in our life and we don't know what's going on, we don't know what to do. We don't know how to respond.
We don't know who to turn to. We can turn to God's word as the answer and the instruction for our life.
And the second thing we can also do is we can trust in what he says. Maybe you can remember back to a moment where someone told you something and you walked away and you said, is that really true?
Is that really the right thing? Did really a million people come to Wilkes County that day? Did really a million people show up to the corner store down here at Bob's store and buy everything they had? Did really that happen?
And you begin to sit back and you scratch your head and you begin to doubt a little bit. If that was maybe a story or a tale that was maybe stretched. Did my father-in-law really catch a fish that big?
And you sit back and you begin to say, maybe he held the camera at the right angle and the fish looked bigger, right? We've been there, guys. And you begin to question, is this really the truth?
Well, we can understand that when God's word says that it's true, when God's word says that we can have faith in him and he'll save us and he'll turn us from our sins, it's words of inspiration in our life that drive us to move forward, that drive us to go
forward the next day, that drive us to go forward to tell our coworker about what Jesus has done for us because they inspire our life and they give us inspiration. But not only are they words of inspiration, but they're words of separation.
Martin Luther thought on this passage for a very long time and he made this statement. He said, God forsaken by God. Who can even understand that? Who can even grasp this thought that God forsook himself? You see, we see here that this is the personal aspect of Jesus.
This is where he personally can relate to us because in his darkest moment in the soul of Christ, not only the skies around Jerusalem were dark, but there was silence from heaven. For the first moment in all eternity past and for all eternity future, the father and the son were not one.
We don't even understand that theologically.
But what we do understand is that the personal humanity of Jesus came out.
The soul of God was separated in this moment. And in that moment, the man of Christ came out and said, God, why?
God, why did you do this? You see, when Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, the father spoke from heaven.
And he said, this is my son and who I am well pleased. When Jesus walked on the earth and he fasted for 40 days and for 40 nights and he went into the desert and he was tempted by all ways possible, the father sent angels down to minister to him.
And God spoke to him through those angels. But now in his deepest, most darkest moments, no one answered. The angels were silent. The world was dark. And God himself was quiet. The word why is a human question. God never asks why.
God never says, well, why did that happen? Jesus is not necessarily asking why in the moment, but he's saying, and when he says why, he's saying, I am becoming one with the creation.
Because God cannot ask why. God knows everything. And Jesus in this moment is becoming one with you.
You see, when Jesus was falsely tried, just a couple of moments before this, he spoke not a word. When he was beaten with a cat of nine tails, he didn't utter a statement.
When he was pressed on his head with the crown of thorns into his brows, he never said a word.
And when they began to nail his hands and his feet to his cross, he spoke nothing. It was not until he reached the pinnacle of his suffering and the father forsook him that he say, why did you abandon me? He had been forsaken by his own family.
He had been forsaken by the disciples. He had been forsaken by the father. And the father was here until this moment. And now at this moment, the father forsook him. And he turned his back on him. He said, I can't even look at you anymore. In that moment of desperation, he said, God,
why? Why have you forsaken me? Because God can't look on sin. Sin is repulsive to God. And God says, I cannot bear to see my son in that image.
The image of you and the image of me. And it was only through the shed blood of Jesus that we now have this separation broken. The veil is torn and now we have this communion with God. But it was because of the separation of Jesus on the cross.
Not only are these inspirational words. Not only are these words of separation. But they're words of education.
The Seriousness of Sin
They can teach us things. They teach us. The first one is the seriousness of sin. They teach us that sin is a real thing. And sin is something we should never want to be around. Look again.
If you have your Bibles there. If not, you can write out Psalms 22.3. The Bible says that thou art holy. God is holy. And God can't look upon sin. Habakkuk 1.13.
The Bible says that thou art purer than all eyes. And you cannot behold evil. Isaiah 59 verse 2 says this. Your iniquities have separated you between you and your God. God is too pure to look upon sin.
And in the moment when Jesus was made sin for us. The Father turned his back on his son. So there's a seriousness here of sin. We should not dabble in sin. The old adage of sin will take you farther than you want to go.
Cost you more than you want to pay. Hey, there's one other thing that I can't remember off the top of my head. But sin is serious.
And we should run from it. We should abhor sin. We should get away from sin. When we see it around us. But it also teaches that there's a substitution for sin. You see, this is how much Jesus loved you and me. He sacrificed himself.
There was a substitution. In the Old Testament, they had what was called a scapegoat offering. It was a goat that was raised. And this goat was taken care of.
And this goat was raised for a year time. And at the end of the year, the priest would take this goat into the desert. And they would let this goat go free to never be found again. And they would come back into the camp. And they would say this.
Your sins are gone, gone, gone. Because that goat was the representation of the sin of Israel. And Jesus became our scapegoat.
And on the cross, when he cried, why have you forsaken me? He's crying out and saying, your sins are gone, gone,
gone. If only we trust. But not only does he teach us the seriousness and the substitution, he teaches us the suffering for sin. You see, the greatest statement in the Bible are the statements that God is love.
And yet, when we view the wrath of God honestly, we see that he demonstrated his wrath on Calvary because he loved you and me.
And when we believe in Jesus and we believe that he died for us, we allow his rejection to spare us from our sins.
And to spare us from our punishment. And to spare us from our suffering. Yes, there will be suffering in this world.
Hope Amidst Suffering
Yes, there will be pain and heartache in this world. We are fallen creatures.
And we are people who live in a fallen world. But yet, in this moment, when we trust in God, we understand that the ultimate suffering, we don't have to endure. Jesus said, I will endure that suffering for you. And I will give my life up for you.
And so we see there's seriousness to sin. We see there's a substitution for sin and there's a suffering for sin. And lastly this morning, we'll look at the words of dedication.
I want you to think of Jesus now in this moment where he's on this cross and he could have gave up. He could have called down 10,000 angels. He could have said, God, this is too much for me to handle. But instead, he asked the question, why?
You see, Jesus spoke three times in the New Testament, the very first three times.
When he multiplied the fishes and the loaves, it was for others. He said, I'm not doing this for my glory. I'm not doing this for my honor. God, bless these loaves and fishes and allow your name to be glorified.
Next time he spoke is when Satan came and told him to turn the stones into bread because he was hungry. He said, I'm not going to do that.
He said, it's not good for man to live by bread alone, but by every word that comes out of God's mouth. And every time Jesus spoke in those moments, it was a thought of other people.
It was the thought of those who were receiving the gift. It was the thought of those who he was saving one day. And in this moment, he was thinking of others.
Many years ago, a guy by the name of William Booth, who was the head of the Salvation Army,
wanted to send out a message to all of his workers. At this time, they didn't have text messages like I send out to the church. They'd have emails. It wasn't convenient for him to send out a message.
And so he wanted this message to go out, but he didn't have a lot of money.
So he went down to the local telegraph station and he said, how much would it cost for me to send out a notice or a letter to all of my different Salvation Army places? And they came back and they said, well, this is how much it costs per word.
And he began to run the numbers and he began to crunch things. And he said,
I just don't have the money to send that, but I got to get a notice out to everybody. And he said, how much would it cost for me to send just one word?
And they came back and they told him. And he said, I can do one word. And so William Booth wrote down one word for this to go out. And that one simple word was others.
The word of this man, William Booth, that he sent out to all of his other organizations was the word others. Because what did God do on the cross? He wasn't thinking of himself.
He was thinking of others. He was thinking of you and me. And what he was saying here is, my God, my God, you've forsaken me. I know I'm still part of my Father, my God, but others need this as well.
And he was so dedicated in his mission that he didn't give up. And he was dedicated to you and me. And ultimately, he loved us so much that he remained on that cross.
He didn't say, I'm going to give up, but I'm going to think of others around us.
Redemption Through Christ
And this thought of love, this thought of redemption and the full value of what God did, it separated God, but it redeemed us on a price that only Christ could pay by dying on the cross.
As Terry comes and begins our invitation, I want us to think of one verse that I mentioned earlier, 2 Corinthians 5.21. For he, God, had made him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made righteous of God in him.
Jesus, in this moment, became sin like we will never experience.
We'll experience sin, we'll experience hardships, but we will never experience what Christ suffered here on this cross. Because of what he did for us.
Before I give this last illustration, I was at a preaching conference on Wednesday, and a guy gave an illustration of the very martyrdom of Christianity.
It's recorded that in the days of, right after Jesus had ascended and went up to glory, some of those very first martyrs were standing there, and it was in about 100 A.D., 60 or 70 years after Jesus,
and a father and a son were standing there, and they were asked, Will you become, will you be a Christian? Will you identify as Christ? And they said, yes, we have to. How can we reject this man?
And in that moment, they surrounded these two men, a man and a son, and they strapped them to a pole, and they began to light them on fire. And they said, will you deny Christ?
And they said, as they stood there in the midst, there wasn't a single ounce of screaming, there wasn't a single ounce of pain, they just simply said, the son looked at the dad and said, Dad, do you see it? There's Jesus. They were just simply worshiping God for what they were suffering.
A Christian once told his pastor, I'm very sorry that I cannot always attend church, for the story of God is dear to my heart.
I was a blind as a brute that knows nothing at all. I had lived an awful amount of wickedness without thinking that I was even wicked. But when I heard God's voice,
this is when I said, what is this? My Lord and my God, who deserves no punishment, and goes on and allows himself to be punished for me, shed his blood and died for me.
In the light of this, everything I have done up until this time is repulsive and worthy of the greatest punishment. Since he had not tasted bitter death that I should have suffered, everything that I have done now appears repulsive to me.
And get this statement, as the longer I live to be made free of these things, the more I know the forgiveness of all of my sins. You see, it's not that we can understand things more clearly, but it's understanding the view of sin from Calvary.
And it's understanding that the revealed truth of God and how Christ took our sins upon his body on a tree, we could ever think kindly of sin in any form. We must abhor sin.
We must turn from sin as we look at Christ and we see that when God looks on sin, he turns us back on it. We must ask ourselves this question, God, or really make this statement, that God grant me a heart of Calvary.
Grant me the heart of Calvary to where when I look at sin, I've got to run from it. I can't be near it. I can't be around it, but I've got to get away from it. Because ultimately, God the Father forsook his son so that he would never have to forsake you.
He would never have to forsake you. He said, I'm going to forsake my son one moment in time
Closing Thoughts and Prayer
so that if you believe me, you're mine forever. I never have to turn my back on you. I'm there every moment of every moment of your day. But all we have to do is trust in him. I'll close with one passage of scripture. Hebrews 13, verse 5 and 6.
Keep your life free from the love of money. Why?
Because we need to be satisfied with what we have. For he himself has said, I will never leave you or forsake you.
Therefore, we may boldly say, the Lord is my helper. I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?
See, when we understand the cost that Christ did on the cross and he said here, why have you forsaken me? We understand he identifies with us
so that we can always be identified with him if we trust in him. As we go into our invitation,
what do you need to do today as far as where you're at? Do you need to pray there in your seat? Maybe you need to grab your wife and you say, I've been struggling with this.
I just need to get this offer. Maybe you're sitting there and you said, I've never trusted Jesus. Come to me now. Come to me after. I'll be around all day.
I don't want you to leave knowing that Christ is not in your heart and you don't know him. Let's pray.
Father, we love you. We thank you for what you've done. God, I pray that you would have your will and way in this service, Lord. Lord, I will never know what you experience on the cross. No one in here will. The abandonment, the forsaken that you experience there.
Lord, help us to know for sure this morning that that's not us.
Help us to go out from here and to tell others as we hand out tracts, as we hand out the word of God, Lord, that others would know who you are and what you've done. Lord, I thank you for this morning, what you've done in my heart as I've studied through this.
In your name we pray. Amen. Thank you again for taking your time to listen to the sermon audio of Pleasant Grove. Please subscribe to get our latest sermons each week.
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