MY GOD, MY GOD, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME
Isaiah 53:6-10
6 All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, everyone, to his own way; And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed, and He was afflicted, Yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, And as a sheep before its shearers is silent, So He opened not His mouth.
8 He was taken from [o]prison and from judgment, And who will declare His generation? For He was cut off from the land of the living; For the transgressions of My people, He was stricken.
9 And they made His grave with the wicked— But with the rich at His death, Because He had done no violence, Nor was any deceit in His mouth.
10 Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, And the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand.
The truth is that we can never tell or understand all that Jesus did on the cross. We can never fully understand the feelings of abandonment Jesus experienced on the cross.
Many of us have preached, taught and tried to explain what Jesus did on the cross, unfortunately most of our preachings and teachings merely scratch the surface.
I am not too sure we can fully explain or imagine what Jesus went through on that cross at Calvary for our redemption.
The verse 10 of Isaiah 53 has always intrigued me. Isaiah inspired by the Holy Spirit says:
Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin,
The message version puts it this way
Still, it’s what God had in mind all along, to crush him with pain.
The plan was that he give himself as an offering for sin so that he’d see life come from it—life, life, and more life. And God’s plan will deeply prosper through him.
In writing this, I realised that God’s love for us can never be quantified.
Paul describes the vastness of God’s love in measurement terms – He describes it in WIDTH, LENGTH, HEIGHT, and DEPTH.
Ephesians 3:18- 19
18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— 19 to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Paul describes God’s love for mankind in this way because you can never quantify His love. What price do pay for a man’s soul?
Psalm 49:7 says this
None of them can by any means redeem his brother,
Nor give to God a ransom for him—
Hebrews 10:4
4 because it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.
It was impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to completely take away our sin.
In the Old Testament the sacrifice for atonement had to be repeated every year. The high priest put on a sacred garment, having prepared himself by bathing in water. Before making atonement for the sins of the people he had to offer a bull for his own sins. After this the high priest took 2 goats and casts lots, one was for the sacrifice and the other was the scapegoat. The high priest then killed the first goat and took its blood into the Holy of Holies and sprinkled the blood on the mercy seat
and made atonement for the sins of the people of Israel. The second goat which was alive, he laid his hand on and confessed the sins of the Israelites. Finally, this goat would be sent away into the wilderness, symbolising the carrying away of their sins.
Leviticus 16:20-22
20 “And when he has made an end of atoning for the Holy Place, the tabernacle of meeting, and the altar, he shall bring the live goat. 21 Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, confess over it all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions, concerning all their sins, putting them on the head of the goat, and shall send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a suitable man. 22 The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to an uninhabited land; and he shall release the goat in the wilderness.
This ritual had to be repeated every year, but it could not fully cleanse the consciences of the people or permanently take away sins.
Hebrews 9:11-15
11 But Christ came as High Priest of the good things to come, with the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is, not of this creation. 12 Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. 13 For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, 14 how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? 15 And for this reason He is the Mediator of the new covenant, by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant, that those who are called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance.
The blood of bulls and goats could not set us free from our sins, because it was temporary. Christ had to come for the completion of what God started. Christ had to come to fulfil the prophecy of Isaiah 53:6
6 All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, everyone, to his own way; And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.
In Matthew 5:17 Jesus said this to the Jews as they listened to Him speak:
17 “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfil.
Jesus did not come to destroy the law of atonement but to fulfil it. He became the high priest, the sacrificial lamb and the scapegoat.
When He hung on that cross, with the sins of the world upon His shoulders, all alone feeling estranged from His Father, He cried out with the feeling of abandonment. He cried out, MY GOD, MY GOD WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME.
He came and died that you are me would be set free from our sins.
God was pleased with this sacrifice. It was a once and for all sacrifice so that everyone held in bondage of sin will be free to approach the throne of Grace to obtain mercy and grace to help in time of need.
Hebrews 9:25-28
25 not that He should offer Himself often, as the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood of another— 26 He then would have had to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now, once at the end of the ages, He has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. 27 And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment, 28 so Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many. To those who eagerly wait for Him He will appear a second time, apart from sin, for salvation.
We are free to approach GOD because of the blood of Jesus our High Priest the lamb of God that was slain before the foundation of the world.
Through His cry of abandonment, we have received the forgiveness of sins.
We have been set free.
