Good Friday – April 22, 2011

Psalm 22:1-11

¹     My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning? ² O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, and am not silent. ³Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One; you are the praise of Israel. ⁴In you our fathers put their trust; they trusted and you delivered them. 5They cried to you and were saved; in you they trusted and were not disappointed. ⁶ But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by men and despised by the people. ⁷All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads: ⁸“He trusts in the Lord; let the Lord rescue him. Let him deliver him, since he delights in him.” ⁹Yet you brought me out of the womb; you made me trust in you even at my mother’s breast. ¹⁰ From birth I was cast upon you; from my mother’s womb you have been my God. ¹¹Do not be far from me, for trouble is near and there is no one to help.

Who is Jesus? And what is the significance of his death? Those are two questions that people will answer in many different ways. Some may deny that a real person named Jesus ever really lived, while others might view him simply as a good man so committed to his teachings that he was willing to be unjustly executed. A martyr and nothing more!

These ideas, of course, are nothing new. For centuries Satan and his unbelieving followers have been challenging the scriptural teaching that Jesus’ death paid the price that a just God demanded for sinners who have violated his holy standards. And until this world ends, we can expect that the devil will continue to do the same.

That’s why it is important for us to recognize that God’s holy, inspired, and unerring Word tells us the truthful answers to those questions. It tells us that Jesus is the Almighty Son of God and our Savior. It reveals to us that his innocent death was the sacrifice needed to pay for our sins and the sins of the world. Jesus, therefore, was not a martyr, but the Savior. And the words of our text this afternoon, from Psalm 22, support us in this proclamation. In Psalm 22 David, by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, records the words that came from the mouth of our Savior Jesus as he hung on the cross. From these words it becomes clear that Jesus is our Savior, not a martyr: for he innocently suffered to save us.

Those who see Jesus as nothing more than a martyr willing to die for his teachings, see his suffering as a cruel death at the hands of wealthy and influential enemies. He suffers physically, but as far as they’re concerned, his suffering ends there. In their view, gone is God’s anger against sin. Gone is the punishment of hell. Gone is the suffering of Jesus’ soul as he makes atonement by becoming a curse for us.

However Jesus’ words, spoken through the mouth of David, give us a very different picture. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, and am not silent.” These words tell us that when Jesus suffered to save us, his suffering was a fact and his suffering was no less than the God- forsaken hell we deserved.

Jesus’ own words, spoken here by David and repeated on the cross, tell us there was more to his suffering than what meets the eye. It was more than just physical. What weighed heaviest on Jesus’ mind was that he was being forsaken by God the Father. More than feeling the nails in his hands, more than feeling the life flow out of his body, more than the cruel mocking of his enemies, Jesus was suffering the pain of hell - for at that moment his own heavenly Father turned his back on him. So Jesus cries: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

And it wasn’t just that he felt forsaken while all the time his Father was there. Like how sometimes we might feel very alone, when in truth there are many friends and family members ready and willing to help. No, Jesus was getting no help and no answer because the Father had turned away. God is not there for Jesus because, at that moment, he does not want to be there. He does not want to help. He has forsaken his Son. Why? Because at that moment on the cross, all the justice that God rightly feels against sin and sinners he vented against his Son. The Bible tells us that sin earns death! That sin carries God’s curse! That God is angry with sinners! That sin warrants the torments of hell! The indescribable anguish, pain, and loneliness that are inseparably joined with sin caused Jesus’ bitter cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Hell is a frightening thought. Not just because that is where the devil will be, not just because it is a place of suffering - but because that is where God’s anger is and his love is not. No person while on earth has ever experienced a moment without some evidence of God’s love. Even in the midst of deepest depression, a glimpse of the brightly burning sun and majesty of creation, a soft petal of a beautiful flower, or the kind word of a close friend can bring joy. These are gifts of love from the heavenly Father. But not in hell. Hell is the complete absence of God’s loving goodness. In hell, God has taken away his hand of love, mercy, grace, and goodness and has replaced it with his oppressive hand of punishment and anger. That is what Jesus suffered during those godforsaken hours of hell on the cross. In testimony to what was happening, even the sun stopped shining!

So do you see how seriously God takes our sins? We can call them whatever we want—errors in judgment, missteps, mistakes, alternative lifestyles. We can try to soften them so they don’t seem so bad. But God calls them sins that demand his justice and punishment in the everlasting torment of hell – even the slightest sin, even if it is committed only in thought. The cross makes it clear that sin is no little thing.

But we also see how seriously God takes our salvation! People may call Jesus many things —a great man, a moral teacher, a martyr. But God calls him our Savior, the Savior of the world. Already from eternity, God the Father gave his Son the assignment to suffer the pain of hell in our place, so that we would never have to. Jesus willingly accepted his assignment. That makes God’s great love so very clear. It makes it clear that our salvation is no small matter to God.

If Jesus hung on the cross as merely a martyr whose example we ought to follow, then consider the hell that must still wait for us. But he is not a martyr; he is our Savior. In tender mercy he invites us to gaze upon the cross with relief. He wants us to see that he really paid the price our sins deserve. God is not angry with us because in Christ Jesus he had his day of vengeance against our sins. We know this because Jesus lets us in on what he suffered on the cross - he suffered the agony of God-forsaken hell. He truly suffered to save us. Look to the cross—on it is no martyr dying for a cause but our Savior dying to save us from our sins. This is the message of Good Friday—we have a Savior who truly suffered to make us at one with God.

Now, while the world’s opinions about Jesus differ, most agree that Jesus was a great man who met an untimely and undeserved death. Even to the world he appears to have been innocent. But before whom do they consider Jesus to be innocent? For them, Jesus is seen as innocent in the eyes of men. But in his own words, spoken through King David, Jesus does not plead his innocence before men but before his own heavenly Father.

Jesus’ question, “Why have you forsaken me?” is legitimate. Why would the Father forsake his Son when on two separate occasions he had declared, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” Past history and his own innocence would indicate that the Father would and must help: “Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One; you are the praise of Israel. In you our fathers put their trust; they trusted and you delivered them. They cried out to you and were saved; in you they trusted and were not disappointed.” Throughout the history of God’s people Israel, God had shown himself as the Holy One worthy of praise.

But Jesus was getting a different picture of the Holy One. Gone from the Father’s face is love toward his chosen people. This Jesus is not even worth calling a man but a worm. Gone from the Father’s heart is the desire to use his power to save. This Jesus is not to be saved but scorned. “I am a worm and not a man, scorned by men and despised by the people. All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads.” It might all make sense if Jesus were a worm and not a man, if Jesus were worthy of scorn and not worthy of saving. But Jesus was just the opposite. He was not just from some chosen nation—He is the Chosen One. He was not just from the people of Israel—he is the Father’s one and only Son. He was not one of the stiff-necked and rebellious people—Jesus is the perfect Son of Man. If anyone should receive the Father’s help, it was Jesus. Yet he suffers to save us.

Jesus’ question is legitimate, and we wince at the answer, don’t we? God forsook his Son, Jesus, because Jesus came to save us. The only way for Jesus to save us was to take our sins upon himself and pay the price for them. Jesus asked why because he himself was not guilty of any sin. Throughout his life he had always done what his Father asked. He had no stain on his record. There was no reason for him to die. He hadn’t earned sin’s wage. We shrink back at his question because we know the answer. Our sins cursed him. Our sins killed him.

The cause for which Jesus died was us – miserable and wretched us. We deserved to truly suffer. We deserved to know what godforsakeness feels like. We deserved the anguish. We deserved the curse. We are guilty. You are guilty. I am guilty. But not anymore: because Jesus, the guiltless Son of God, died in the greatest injustice the world has ever known so he could be our Savior who would take away our guilt.

Dear friends, Jesus was innocent of all sin in the eyes of his heavenly Father, and it had to be that way if he was going to be our Savior from sin. The fact that Jesus pleaded his innocence reveals that he suffered innocently for us. The punishment he suffered paid for our sins. Faith in what his death accomplished is the way for us to get out of the hell we justly deserve and into the heaven that we don't deserve. He removed the guilt of our sins and made us one with God. That’s not a martyr hanging on the cross. That’s our Savior. Amen.