Tuesday, August 27, 2024

PT-2 "Sovereign Departure" (Matt. 27:46-49)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/27/2024 9:39 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                                  Focus:  PT-2 “Sovereign Departure”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                              Reference:  Matthew 27:46-49

 

            Message of the verses:  46 About the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, "ELI, ELI, LAMA SABACHTHANI?" that is, "MY GOD, MY GOD, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME?" 47 And some of those who were standing there, when they heard it, began saying, "This man is calling for Elijah." 48 Immediately one of them ran, and taking a sponge, he filled it with sour wine and put it on a reed, and gave Him a drink. 49 But the rest of them said, "Let us see whether Elijah will come to save Him.’”

 

            I want to begin by looking at what Habakkuk declared of God in Hab. 1:13 “Thine eyes are too pure to approve evil, and Thou canst not look on wickedness with favor.”  Now I want you to think about how difficult it was for God to forgive our sins, and part of that problem can be seen in this verse from Habakkuk.  It was hard for the Father to send His Son to earth for those 33 years, it was hard for the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ to leave His home in heaven and be away from His Father for 33 years.  It was hard for the Son to get Himself ready to become the Sacrifice for sin as we saw that He sweat great drops of blood before the angels came to help Him with this issue.  However once He got His mind ready for what He was called to do, that is be crucified for our sins then He went through with it all the way to the end.  I mentioned it was hard for both the Father and the Son to be separated from each other, and even harder for the Son to have His Father take out all the sins of the world that were ever sinned as He became sin for us that we may have His righteousness.  This took place the last three hours that Christ was on the cross, and you have to look at all of the gospels to understand this as some of them do not speak of this.  Jesus went through great agony, the greatest agony while the Father took out the punishment on the Son for what you and I deserve.  He could not even call God His Father at that time as He said what David wrote in Psalm 22:1 “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me? Far from my deliverance are the words of my groaning.”  That term “My God” is seen four times in Psalm 22, twice in the first verse.

 

            John MacArthur writes that “Jesus did not die as a martyr to a righteous cause or simply as an innocent man wrongly accused and condemned.  Nor, as some suggest, did He die as a heroic gesture against man’s inhumanity to man.  The Father could have looked favorably on such selfless deaths and those.  But because Jesus died as a substitute sacrifice for the sins of the world, the righteous heavenly Father had to judge Him fully according to that sin.

 

            “The Father forsook the Son because the Son too upon Himself ‘our transgressions,…our iniquities’ (Isa. 53:5).  Jesus ‘was delivered up because of our transgressions’ (Rom. 4:25) and ‘died for our sins accordingly to the Scriptures’ (1 Cor. 15:3).  He ‘who knew no sin [became] sin on our behalf’ (2 Cor. 5:21) and became ‘a curse for us’ (Gal. 3:13).  ‘He himself bore our sins in His body on the cross’ (1 Peter 2:24), ‘died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust’ (1 Pet. 3:18), and became ‘the propitiation for our sins’ (1 John 4:10).”

 

            Now Jesus Christ not only bore man’s sin but actually became sin on man’s behalf, in order that those who believe in Him might be saved from the penalty of their sin.  Now as He bore our sin and became sin for us we can understand that Jesus never did sin, and the reason that He never did sin was because it was impossible for Him to sin because of who He was and is.

 

            Jesus came to teach men perfectly about God and who God is as He Himself was the perfect example of God’s holiness and righteousness.  MacArthur adds “But as He Himself declared the supreme reason for His coming to earth was not to teach or to be an example but ‘to give His life a ransom for many” (Matt. 20:28).

 

            “When Christ was forsaken by the Father, their separation was not one of nature, essence, or substance.  Christ did not in any sense of degree cease to exist as God or as a member of the Trinity.  He did not cease to be the Son, any more that a child who sins severely against his human father ceases to be his child.  But Jesus did for a while cease to know the intimacy of fellowship with His heavenly Father, just as a disobedient child ceases for a while to have intimate, normal, loving fellowship with his human father.”

 

            These are very interesting truths that we as believers need to understand, as this shows part of the complexity of How our sins were taken care of by Christ and the Father.

 

8/27/2024 10:17 AM

 

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