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THE FATHER ABANDONS THE SONPSALM 22:1-21INTRODUCTION This past week at the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, the self-confessed Al-Quaida terrorist who has been convicted of being part of the 9/11 attack, the prosecution played the tapes from the airliner that went down in Pennsylvania. You could hear the terrorists killing the crew and then the passengers attacking and killing one of the terrorists and then the terrorists praying to Allah as they sent the plane into a dive that ended in the Pennsylvania farm field. In addition the prosecution played tapes of firefighters and police officers and cell phone calls of those who died in the World Trade Center. We are all witnesses to the events that took place on that dreadful day. We observed the events from the outside, we watched the planes fly into the towers, but these tapes gave to us and to the jury who will decide Mousauoui’s fate a different point of view. These recordings tell us what these experiences were like for those who perished in them. We get a greater and more intimate sense of the terror and sorrow and courage of those who actually experienced these awful events by listening to their report of what happened as it happened. Psalm 22 is the recording of the final words and experiences of Jesus Christ while he suffered and died on the cross. These words are his account while hanging upon that cross with the nails driven through his hands and feet. The accounts of Jesus’ final hours recorded in the four gospels are the external, observed report of those final horrific hours. They are like the video footage we all watched as the planes flew into the world trade center and as they crashed to the ground. However, in this Psalm we get to hear from the lips of Jesus himself what it was like to suffer and die on that cross. This psalm is given to us so that we can grow in our admiration for and trust in the great Son of David who voluntarily laid down his life upon that cross. Through this psalm we will see something of the hell that Jesus endured for us and the means by which he was able to endure that hell. My prayer for us is that as we listen to Jesus describe the torture he endured and the confidence in God that enabled him to not succumb to the torture we will respect and rejoice in him more than we currently do. My aim this evening is to help all of us to see with new eyes the forsakenness and the faith of the Son of God. That will be my outline tonight: first to examine the forsakenness of Jesus on the cross and then the faith of Jesus while enduring an abandonment that no one in here has ever experienced and I pray never will experience. The forsakenness of Jesus Christ The reason that we know that this psalm is the personal testimony of Jesus’ experience on the cross is because Jesus cries out the first line of this psalm just moments before he dies upon the cross. We also know this is Jesus’ account of his experience on the cross because if you compare the language of this psalm with the accounts in each of the gospels of Jesus’ final hours you will discover an uncanny similarity. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John intentionally use the very words of this psalm in their descriptions of Jesus’ crucifixion. From the mockery of the leaders, crowds and thieves to the dividing of his clothing and casting lots for his robe by the Roman soldiers to the shock of the disciples at the death of their Messiah, all of these descriptions pick up on the language of this psalm. I will organize my thoughts around the question that Jesus asks, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?” Four questions will help us to see what Jesus describes here: who is the one who does the forsaking? Who is the one forsaken? What does it mean to be forsaken? Finally, I want us to answer the question that Jesus poses: why does the Father forsake the Son? First, who is the one who does the forsaking? The one who turns his back and ignores the pleas for help from the lips of Jesus is none other than the personal God of Jesus. He is the God with whom Jesus is personally related. This is the Holy One of Israel who rules in the heavens over all things. He is the one whom Israel praises each day in the temple. This is the one who made promises to care for his people and who has in fact been faithful to watch over generations of Israelites. Generations of Israelites have called out to this same God and have been delivered by him from their trouble. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Joshua, Samson, Samuel, David and scores of others have not been forsaken by this faithful God. He is the one who is the Father of Jesus, who personally brought him forth from the womb of his mother Mary and who caused him to trust him from birth. This one who turns his back on Jesus has been with Jesus from his conception and has supported him at every moment of his entire life, but now he ignores the pleas for help. Who is the one who is forsaken? This is the one who has trusted in God from birth. There has never been a moment in the life of Jesus when he did not love and trust this God, this Holy One of Israel. As we will see, even now when the Father abandons him, he does not abandon his faith in his Father. He continues to trust in the one who ignores his cry for help, who abandons him on the cross. It is very interesting to note that in many other psalms this term “forsake” is used but always in a positive way in relation to God. For example Psalm 9:10 says, “Those who know your name will trust in you, for you Lord have never forsaken those who seek you.” In Psalm 37:28 we are told, “For the Lord loves the righteous and will not forsake his faithful ones.” If ever there were a person who trusted Yahweh, who sought God, who was righteous and faithful, it would be Jesus Christ. In fact, he is the only human who always trusted the Lord, sought the Lord, and who was always righteous and faithful. He is the only person about whom these promises can actually be made. There has never been another human being who could really ask v. 1 because every other human being can think of reasons why God should forsake him or her. The only legitimate “why” question any human, except Jesus, can honestly ask is, “why have you not forsaken me?” As the apostle Paul, quoting many different psalms reminds us, there is no one righteous, no one who seeks God, no one who does good, no one who is faithful. There are hundreds of reasons as to why God should forsake us but there was no reason in Jesus for why God should forsake him because he was the person described in the psalms whom God promises to never forsake. What does it mean that God forsakes Jesus? Let’s work our way through the psalm in order to see how Jesus himself describes what it feels like to be forsaken. First, God does not act to save Jesus in any way. Jesus is betrayed, beaten, abandoned by his friends, undergoes unjust trials, he is tortured and mocked, stripped of his clothes, then nailed to a cross and hung up to be gazed at by all who pass by and God does not lift a finger to intervene. He watches and does nothing to prevent even one ounce of the suffering. Jesus cries out to him day and night and he completely ignores his cries for help. The Father listens to his child crying in agony and does nothing to help him. He treats him as if he is his enemy. No comforting words, no tokens of affection. No arms to hold him while the Father’s voice tells him it’s going to be all right. God leaves him to the devices of those who hate him. Jesus says he is a worm and not a man. He is the most vulnerable and defenseless of creatures with no one to care for him or to help him. He is a worm that is carelessly squashed under the feet of callous men. His enemies surround him like a pack of wild beasts tearing at him and devouring him. He is like a man dropped into the middle of a herd of enraged bulls, like a lamb set in the midst of a pride of lions, like a wounded rabbit placed among a pack of wild dogs. Physically and emotionally he has no strength. He is poured out like water upon the earth and his heart melts like wax. There is no strength to resist in his body and no power to fend off the attacks of his enemies in his heart. He is in this condition not only because God has turned his back on him but because God himself has laid him in the dust of death. God himself has brought all this suffering upon his Son. He is not dead and yet his enemies divide his property as if he were already dead. He is surrounded by callous, uncaring, cruel people who can only stare at his emaciated and beaten body. Let’s answer the final question, which is the question with which Jesus begins: Why did God the Father forsake God the Son? Especially in light of the promises we read earlier that God never forsakes those who seek him and we know that Jesus sought God. So why does he forsake him? The answer to the why is stated clearly in Isaiah 53 using the very language of this psalm: “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering… he was despised and we esteemed him not… he was pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities, the punishment that brought us peace was upon him… the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all… he poured out his life unto death and was numbered among the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.” In the New Testament, in 2 Cor 5:21, “God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us...” 1 Peter 2:24, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree...” What Jesus is describing for us here is what hell is. Jesus is experiencing the fire of God’s just wrath against human sin. This is what each human being deserves from God. This is a description, by Jesus, the only person who has ever gone through hell and come back to talk about it, of what it would be like to go to hell forever. The amazing thing is that he is the only person who deserved to not go to hell and yet that is exactly what he did for us, for all who will trust in him. God forsook Jesus because Jesus became sin for us. Jesus took on the sins of all who trust in him and thus experienced the God-forsaken hell that all of us deserve. My dear friend, marvel at this amazing description of the reality of what Jesus Christ did for you, if you trust in him. He was forsaken so that you could be forgiven and loved and never forsaken. God turned his back on Jesus so that he would never have to turn his back on you who trust in Jesus. However not only should you marvel at the forsakenness that he endured for your sake but also marvel at his faith in the face of his forsakenness. The faith of Jesus Christ is revealed in this Psalm in the most startling of ways. It begins with the first words out of his mouth, “My God, my God…” Even though Jesus is abandoned by God he never abandons God. He continues to trust God, even though God pays no attention to his prayers, to his cries for mercy; even though he is not going to save him, yet he believes that God is his God. While he is being subjected to the worst kinds of human cruelty he yet confesses that God is the Holy One who rules over all that human beings do. He is confident that God is in charge of what is happening to him and does not accuse God of being unholy even though such extreme evil is being done to him. As C. H. Spurgeon says that Jesus recognizes that, “If prayer be unanswered it is not because God is unfaithful but for some other good and weighty reason.” This, I think is perhaps the chief evidence of the faith of Jesus, he keeps praying right up to the end. Again Spurgeon says, “Our Lord continued to pray even though no comfortable answer came, and in this he set us an example of obedience to his own words, ‘men ought always to pray and not lose heart.’” He did not stop praying even though he knew that God had forsaken him and was ignoring his prayers. So was Jesus a fool to keep on praying? Not at all, because he knew that God had a good purpose in what he was doing and that ultimately God would hear his prayers, as we will see in a moment. Jesus’ faith is revealed not only in the fact that he prays but also in the way he prays. He seeks to give to God reasons as to why God ought to hear and answer. Here we find modeled for us the kind of praying that should characterize us as God’s people at all times but especially in times of great trouble. When God appears to have forsaken us is not the time to stop praying but the time to redouble our prayers. Prayer is what believing people do. Follow with me, beginning in v. 3 the reasons Jesus gives for why God should answer his prayers. 1)God is holy and enthroned in the heavens, therefore he should answer his prayer. 2)He answered the prayers of his troubled people on countless other occasions. 3)All opposes him and the name of God himself is being mocked by the mockery of his enemies. 4)God himself gave him the faith that he possesses from the moment of his birth, therefore God ought to hear and answer the one he has loved from birth. 5)The trouble is near and there is no one else to help. 6)He is surrounded by the most terrifying and cruelest of men and he has no strength in himself to resist. God should be strong on his behalf because he is weak. 7)God should listen to him and be near to him and deliver him because he only has one life and it is being taken from him. Jesus, being abandoned by God, going through hell for us, yet continues to pray and to trust in the God who has abandoned him. The writer to the Hebrews tells us Jesus “offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death and he was heard because of his reverent submission.” This psalm tells us that Jesus was heard. I want you to notice the radical change in the tone of the psalm between vv. 21 and 22. Whereas vv. 1-21 describes Jesus’ experience on the cross, vv. 22-31 describes a much different experience. He declares the name of God to his brothers and calls them all to join him in praising the Lord. Why does he call for praise? In v. 24 he tells us that the reason for praise is because God has not despised or disdained his suffering. God has not hidden his face but has listened to his cry for help. How and when did God do this? At the resurrection from the dead is when God heard the cries of Jesus and delivered him. The God who ignored his cries for help on the cross was always planning on answering those cries at the resurrection. Every prayer that every true Christian prays will be answered in its fullness at the resurrection from the dead. Every answer to prayer prior to the resurrection is only a partial and temporary answer. Notice in v. 27 that Jesus says that because of his suffering and God’s listening to his cry all the ends of the earth will join in the praise, all the families of the nations will bow before God. The Psalm ends with a description by Jesus of his glorification and the results for all the nations through all generations. All the nations will bow before God because the Son of God was abandoned upon that cross. © Copyright 2006 John Swanson.
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