Why did Jesus cry out from the cross, "My God... "

“Dead”

(Matthew 27:45-56, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, November 23, 2008)

Matthew 27:45-56 ⁴⁵ Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. ⁴⁶ And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, "Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?" that is, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" ⁴⁷ And some of the bystanders, hearing it, said, "This man is calling Elijah." ⁴⁸ And one of them at once ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine, and put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink. ⁴⁹ But the others said, "Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him." ⁵⁰ And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit. ⁵¹ And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split. ⁵² The tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, ⁵³ and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many. ⁵⁴ When the centurion and those who were with him, keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were filled with awe and said, "Truly this was the Son of God!" ⁵⁵ There were also many women there, looking on from a distance, who had followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to him, ⁵⁶ among whom were Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joseph and the mother of the sons of Zebedee.

Introduction – Things that God lets us see and things that He does not let us see

In these few weeks that we have at the end of Matthew’s gospel, we are largely following the ancient creeds of the church in examining that Jesus was crucified, dead, and buried, before we move on to the glorious fact that on the third day He rose again from the dead. You may have wondered why these doctrinal statements speak of the crucifixion of Jesus as a separate article of faith from the death of our Lord. These two things are actually very different. Crucifixion was by design a very public event. The point was to expose the criminal to the open viewing of others as a societal disgrace and a warning to others. It was only to be used in the case of those who were deemed to be the worst and most dangerous offenders against public order.

There is a sense in which death, on the other hand, is a very mysterious and even private thing. It is measured in part by the absence of what are called vital signs, signs of life. A body once had a pulse and respiration. Now these things are gone. The Lord gives life and takes it away. There is something about it that we definitely cannot measure at all, since it involves the separation of the mortal body and the immortal soul. Where does that soul go? What exactly happens to that part of the person? The Lord certainly knows, and He has told us some of that story. What is amazing is that He came Himself and went through the mystery and horror of this thing called death. He had a mortal body and a soul. The two were together, and then they were not. The body was dead. The soul was alive.

Smitten by God (45-46)

There are many things about the Lord’s death that we could not know unless God chose to reveal these to us. We could not know what He was thinking and feeling, and what was happening in His death in the unseen realm of the soul and the spirit. We also could not know what the purpose and future impact of His death would be unless the Lord condescended to reveal these things to us. What is most remarkable is that God has revealed so much to us about the death of Christ, and He has done this especially through our Lord’s concise quotation of a portion of just one verse of the Bible which Jesus spoke while on the cross itself, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

This is part of the first verse of Psalm 22. Most people do not think about that fact. They only think about the words themselves as if they had no context. They are very powerful and mysterious words, words of a horrible trial, of rejection by God, haunting words that come in the form of a question, words that many have found strangely comforting and validating as they have faced the mystery of suffering in their own lives, and remembered that Christ faced deep suffering for us. There is something very right and powerful about letting these words stand by themselves, but we are left with a suspicion that there must be more to it all. We rightly suspect that our Lord would never have misused God’s Word by quoting it out of context. (Read Psalm 22.)

This Psalm is a vow psalm, where the worshipper is crying out to God for help, and promising to make some specified payment to God. We notice that while the Psalm starts out with a very low point, the question that Jesus quotes, it ends with an amazing high point. That high point is part of the payment section of the vow. What does Christ promise to pay? The suffering Servant who was smitten by God, expressing complete confidence that He has been heard by the Lord, promises to bring Him praise, not just personal praise, but the praise of an amazing congregation, the praise of people who lived so long ago that they are presently just dust in the grave, and the praise even of a mighty host of people who were yet to be born. We can immediately conclude that David could never have fulfilled the promise of this Psalm, but we also should conclude that this is exactly what Christ came to do. At just the right time He will deliver a temple of people up to the Father, people from all places and times, people who will live in the resurrection praise of God as obedient servants and sons of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

We are persuaded that this Psalm is much more about Jesus than it is about David, since it describes the suffering of death by crucifixion, and some of the other particulars of the death of Christ, despite the fact that it was written centuries before that death, and even centuries before we have any knowledge of the use of this particular kind of capital punishment. Some of these details include the treatment our Lord received from those who were near him, some of the actual words that were said, the description of the bodily condition of someone who dies on a cross, the fact that cruel Gentiles would be there at his death, the disposition of His clothing, and especially the piercing of His hands and feet. There is no other known form of torture or execution fitting that description, yet this was written long before ancient empires apparently started crucifying enemies and before the Romans took up the practice and expanded its use. But God knew, and the Son of God knew, and thus He spoke through David in Psalm 22.

Here also we learn of not only the physical anguish of Christ, but the emotional and spiritual turmoil of His death. We hear His sense of being surrounded by wild animals, the extreme hatred of the people around Him, His remembrance of His Father’s history of faithfulness, the urgency of His petition for help from His Father, but especially the conviction that somehow He was suffering at the hand of His Father.

Confusion (47-49)

The depth of misery at the hand of the Almighty in this Psalm combined with the heights of assurance of the coming eternal praise of the Almighty in the very same Psalm creates a great mystery, a mystery that could only be solved by understanding what the Father and the Son were doing in this death which is at the center of the entire human story. The crowd that observed this wretched man crying out these words had absolutely no understanding of what was happening. After three hours of darkness that was over all the land, this brutalized and mocked Healer and Teacher shouts out words. They do not recognize the Aramaic word for “My God,” and make the completely mistaken conclusion that Jesus is calling out to Elijah. They do something to lift up a drink to Him, an action that makes little sense except as a fulfillment of a phrase in Psalm 69, and then they wait to see if Elijah comes to help.

Power (50-54)

Out of the darkness of human confusion, something immensely powerful happens. Jesus dies. He yielded up His spirit. The picture is of a willingness to do what absolutely needed to be done. The mysterious event has just taken place. He’s dead. He’s gone. Where did He go? We are given no answer immediately, but we can see that there is power in this death. First, God apparently tore the curtain in the temple that protected people from the danger of the presence of God in the Holy of Holies. A way has been made of access to God through the death of Jesus Christ. Second, an earthquake shakes the land, and tombs are opened as rocks that sealed them are pushed away. Bodies were later raised and were seen coming out of the tombs. An entire age of resurrection is coming through the death of Jesus Christ. Even before His coming again in glory, the story of the victory of the death of Christ is being told by the Father in this glimpse from heaven as the spirits of some number of people are reunited with bodies in such a way that they physically appear to many. Third, a Gentile soldier comes to the conclusion that millions would later come to over the centuries ahead. He considers what happened, and he says, “Truly this was the Son of God.”

Witnesses (55-56)

This is not a myth. This is an historical account of the events surrounding the death of Jesus. The citation of Psalm 22 for our benefit, the curtain in the temple torn from top to bottom, the resurrection appearance of people out of their tombs, and the profession of faith by a Roman centurion that Jesus Christ of Nazareth is surely the Son of God... There were observers who could testify to these facts.

We have not even reached Matthew 28, and there is already much here that is indicating that the plan of God to save sinners has actually worked, and we indeed have peace with God and a hope of resurrection through Jesus Christ our Lord. There is no better news that that, but only through the gift of the Holy Spirit can this news be yours today. Do you have any sense of your own personal need for a Savior? Are you able to see that something happened to Jesus that you deserved, and that He didn’t deserve? Are you able to see that there is power here for you?

The death of Christ was not accidental, impulsive, or coincidental. Psalm 22 makes that undeniably clear. The only way to explain the deep low of abandonment and the great height of eternal resurrection praise is to recognize that there was an agreement between the Father and the Son. The Son would come to live a life that was perfectly good according to the Law of God, and then He would die a death for people like us who are evil according to the Law of God. This is what the Son of God came from heaven to do, and He did it. And it was powerful. It gave every repentant sinner access to the Father, it secured for us a life of blessing beyond the grave, and it gave us something very worthwhile to believe in. This is a love that was costly. It is a love that calls you to a new life.

Questions for meditation and discussion:

1. What is the significance of Christ’s citation of Psalm 22 from the cross?

2. What are some of the signs that something very powerful happened in the death of Jesus?

3. What are some of the things that the witnesses could have seen that day that would be worth remembering?

4. What are some of the things that the witnesses could not have observed that they might need to know?