About the ninth hour, so after three hours of this darkness, Jesus cried with a loud
voice, "Eli, Eli, la mas avactari!"
He screams out, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"
And you know, the people that are around him, they're looking at it as, yeah, I mean, he's
forsaken by God.
Now, at this moment, he truly was forsaken by God, of course.
But we know he's not going to be ultimately forsaken because three days later, he's going
to rise again.
He's going to be resurrected.
But the people that are there, they don't realize that part.
They think this is an ultimate forsaking, right?
They think he's done.
Now, some people will say, well, you know, Jesus just said that, but look, Jesus Christ
is the truth.
And when he's hanging on the cross, screaming at the top of his lungs, bloody and dying,
you better take seriously what he said and believe what he said is accurate.
Oh, he's just quoting Psalm 22.
What a time to quote scripture.
He's not quoting Psalm 22.
He's crying out from his heart to God and screaming out saying, "My God, my God, why
hast thou forsaken me?"
Now, some people say, "Well, he wasn't really forsaken by God."
Yes, he was forsaken by God.
He didn't say, "My God, my God, did you forsake me?"
He said, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"
He's accurate there.
Why is that?
Because the Bible says that God is of purer eyes than to behold evil and cannot look on
iniquity.
And Jesus Christ and God the Father had enjoyed sweet fellowship since literally the world
began.
In John chapter 17 he said, "Thou loved me before the world began."
And all throughout eternity past up to this point there's been that loving father-son
relationship between Jesus and God the Father and that for the first time is broken here.
Why?
Because he who knew no sin became sin for us that we might be made the righteousness
of God in him.
Jesus Christ became sin for us.
The Bible says he bore our sins in his own body on the tree.
So here's Jesus Christ hanging on the cross.
It's not just a physical beating as horrific as that was and the mockery and the spitting
and the shame and the blood but also he took upon him the sins of the world.
So at that moment Jesus Christ was guilty of every sin that you've ever done.
Right?
I mean that's how God was looking at it.
He laid on him the iniquity of us all.
He who knew no sin became sin for us.
The sinless son of God was taking the punishment and became guilty of your sins and my sins.
The sins of the whole world are born in his own body.
So here he is just for that moment basically with all the sins of the world placed upon
him as if he is just the worst sinner ever, just the whole sins of the whole world on
his account and God can't have fellowship with that.
God the Father has to turn his back on the Lord Jesus Christ here.
He can't have fellowship with that.
God's justice, God's wrath kicks in at that point and Jesus experiences what it is to
be forsaken.
He experiences what it is to have the sins of the world placed upon him.
He experiences what it is to be guilty and punished by God for the sins that everyone
has done.
And the proof that he's not just quoting Psalm 22, folks, Psalm 22 is quoting him.
Psalm 22 is looking into the future, looking to the cross of Christ and quoting the Son
of God.
Isaiah 53 is looking into the future.
Isaiah is getting this vision and saying, you know, he's so beaten, he's so marred.
Here he is carrying our sins and people are mocking him.
Psalm 22 says, you know, he trusts on the Lord that he would deliver him.
Let him deliver him seeing he delighted him.
Folks, Psalm 22 is quoting Jesus, not vice versa.
The proof is because Psalm 22 is written in Hebrew and Jesus here is not speaking Hebrew.
It gives us his exact words and it's not Hebrew, it's Aramaic.
Aramaic was the language that the Jews spoke at the time of Christ.
They didn't speak Hebrew anymore.
Hebrew was already dying as an everyday language when they went into the Babylonian captivity
and all the things that have happened since, culturally they had switched to using Aramaic
as their everyday language.
And at this time when people would go to the synagogue and hear the Hebrew scriptures read,
they often needed translations of portions where the Hebrew was not understandable to
them anymore and they needed someone to give it in Aramaic and tell them, "Hey, here's
what it is in Aramaic," because that was their everyday language.
That's why when Jesus is quoted verbatim in the New Testament, it's always Aramaic that
he's speaking.
And obviously when you're dying and you're going through these horrible things, you're
going to speak in your heart language.
You're going to speak in the language that's your native language, that's nearest and dearest
to your heart.
I mean, think about it.
If you're injured severely and you're crying out to God in your last moments, are you going
to cry out in a foreign language that you've been studying or something that you speak as
a second language?
No.
He's crying out in his heart language, which is Aramaic.
That was his native, everyday language.
And history tells us that that was the native, everyday language in that time at that period.
Greek was kind of the universal second language that they all spoke as a second language,
but their main at-home language was probably Aramaic.
And we know Jesus spoke Aramaic because here it is, Aramaic, and lots of other examples.
So if Jesus would have been quoting the Bible, then he would have just called it out in Hebrew.
It would read exactly like Psalm 22, right, he was just quoting the Bible.
But no, no, no, he's saying it in Aramaic.
And the reason Psalm 22 records it in Hebrew is because it's written at a period when God's
people spoke Hebrew.
You know, it was back when Hebrew was their main language, so that's why it's written
in Hebrew.
So it's looking forward and getting that Aramaic quote and putting it in the language of that
time.
Because Jesus is crying out from his heart something meaningful to him.
That's why this is important.
Not just this cop-out of, "Oh, he just quoted scripture."
You say, "Why would people not like the scripture?"
Well, you know, for example, people who deny the Trinity, people who reject the teaching
of the Trinity and believe in the stupid oneness doctrine or Jesus-only doctrine, how can God
forsake him if basically they're saying that he and God the Father are the same person?
He's like, "Why?
Myself?
Why are you forsaking me?"
It'd be stupid.
It doesn't make any sense, right?
But guess what?
Oneness is that stupid.
It's like the flat earth of theology.
It's that dumb.
It's that ridiculous.
You have to be a complete idiot or just evil and wicked and reprobate to just reject the
clear teaching of the Trinity and want to believe in this Jesus-only doctrine.
It's so dumb.
Okay?
Look, and they say, "Oh, well that's the man Jesus being forsaken by God."
So who's this Jesus that's not divine that the oneness people have hanging on the cross?
Because if it was, it's the man Christ Jesus being forsaken.
Okay, well then, so there's this man that's not divine or something that's being forsaken?
That doesn't even make sense.
That's the humanity of Christ.
No, no, no.
The Jesus that died on the cross for me was God from start to finish.
He was deity.
He had full divinity.
In Him dwelled all the fullness of the Godhead bodily from start to finish.
Godhead means godhood, godness, right?
Godhead is just an old word.
There's an old word for virginity called maidenhead.
Look it up in the dictionary.
Maidenhead means maidenhood.
Godhead means godhood.
This is an old word.
And so in Him dwells all the fullness of deity, all the fullness of divinity, all the fullness
of godness, all the fullness of godhood, all the fullness of the godhead bodily.
Folks, it's not something that comes and goes like, "Oh, when he got baptized then he became
divine."
And then when he's on the cross, you know, it departs.
Wrong.
Jesus Christ is intrinsically God.
He was in the beginning with God, and He was God.
Why?
Because He's the Son of God.
And He was in the beginning with God, He was God.
Why?
Because God is comprised of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
Three persons, one God.
So the Trinity is biblical and matches up with what the Scripture teaches here.
So yes, the Son was forsaken by God the Father.
And this was something that is unparalleled in history where these two that had been so
united in love even before the world began have now been ripped apart, right?
And there's this separation between God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.