SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/28/2024 8:49 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-3
“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.’”
We ended the last SD writing about how Jesus, for a
while cease to know the intimacy of fellowship with His heavenly Father, in a
similar way that a child sins ceases for a while to have intimate, normal,
loving fellowship with his human father.
And now we want to talk about how at the incarnation there already had
been a partial separation between the Father and the Son in order to provide
salvation for those who will accept the offer that is given through the death
burial and resurrection of God the Son.
Jesus, at the incarnation had been separated from His divine glory and
from face-to-face communication with the Father, refusing to hold on to thos
divine privileges for His own sake as seen in Phil. 2:6 “who, although He
existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be
grasped” Jesus prayed to the Father in
the presence of His disciples, “Glorify Thou Me together with Thyself, Father,
with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was” (John 17:5). MacArthur adds “At the cross His separation
from the Father became immeasurably more profound than the humbling incarnation
during the thirty-three years of His earthly life.”
MacArthur
goes on to explain “As already mentioned, the mystery of that separation is far
too deep even for the most mature believer to fathom. But God has revealed the basic truth of it
for us to accept and to understand to the limit of our ability under the
illumination of His Spirit. And nowhere
in Scripture can we behold the reality of Jesus’ sacrificial death and the
anguish of His separation from His Father more clearly and penetratingly than
in His suffering on the cross because of sin.
In the midst of being willingly engulfed in our sins and the sins of all
men of all time, He withered in anguish not from the lacerations on His back or
the thorns that still pierced His head or the nails that held Him to the cross
but from the incomparably painful loss of fellowship with heavenly Father that
His becoming sin for us had brought.” I
have mentioned before that when Jesus was in the garden praying and the tempter
came to tempt Him, trying not to have Jesus go to the cross, for that spelled
doom for Satan. When Jesus was sweating
great drops of blood, and His desire was for His disciples to be praying for
Him, but they were asleep, that when the angels came to minister to Him because
of the anguish that He was in that Jesus then (it’s kind of hard for me to
explain in words other than earthly words) that He then knew what must be done and
then became ready to accomplish what had been planned for Him in eternity
past. Make no mistake about it that
Jesus Christ was in complete control of what was happening to Him, and then
remember that He did what He did because He loves you, He loves me, and without
His sacrifice on the cross there would be salvation for no one, including those
in the Old Testament who had put their trust in God to provide salvation for
them, and it happened when Jesus Christ suffered and died on the cross, was
then buried and rose again on the third day.
“MacArthur
goes on to write “Soon after He cried out to God about being forsaken, ‘Jesus,
knowing that all things had already been accomplished, in order that the
Scriptures might be fulfilled, said, ‘I am thirsty’’ (John 19:28). As John then makes clear (v. 29), it was at
that time that immediately one of them ran, and taking a sponge, he filled it
with sour wine, and put it on a reed, and gave Him as drink,”
It was probably one of the Roman military guards
that was the one who ran to help Jesus by taking a sponge and filling it with
sour wine, he hoped temporally to satisfy Jesus thirst. This sour wine was a cheap wine that had been
diluted with a lot of water that workers would drink while working. The water was not really that good to drink
then and so putting a little cheap wine in it made it taste better. There certainly was not high alcohol content
in it. Reading from John’s gospel we
find that the reed that the sponge was attached to was a hyssop branch (John
19:29), which would not have been linger than eighteen inches. Now in order for such a short branch to reach
Jesus’ lips, the horizontal beam of the cross would have had to be rather low to
the ground.
MacArthur
writes that “Offering the drink to Jesus was perhaps an act of mercy, but it
was minimal in its elect and served only to prolong the torture before death
brought relief. But the rest of those
standing near the cross used that gesture of kindness as another opportunity to
carry their mockery of the Lord still further, saying, ‘Let us see whether
Elijah will come to save Him.’”
Now
in reading this last paragraph from MacArthur’s commentary on this section of
verses that he is writing about something that I have thought about, and that
is that for the past three hours it had been dark, and I believe the reason for
darkness was so that no one could have seen how the Father was taking out on
Jesus the payment for my sin and for yours.
These people around the cross seemed to think that this was something
normal to have darkness in the middle of the day. I guess that shows how much that the really hated
the Lord. MacArthur writes “Being aware
of the many Old Testament associations of unnatural darkness with judgment, it would
seem they would at least briefly had considered the possibility that divine
judgment was occurring at that very moment.
But the single thought now on their minds was to make Jesus’ death
painful and humiliating. They had no
comprehension of the amazing alienation of the Son from the Father.” I believe that that was more painful for
Jesus than the nails and the thorns.
8/28/2024 9:28 AM
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