I want to preach to you from
this statement by our Lord Jesus as he suffered the wrath of God
as our shariter when he was made to be sin for us. You have the
text before you in Mark chapter 15 and verse 34. The Son of God cried with a loud
voice, My God, my God. Why hast thou forsaken me?" The horrid load of all my guilt
was on my Savior's leg. With sin and shame and darkness
he for me was once arrayed. While bearing all the wrath of
God, forgive, he prayed for me. in love embraced my wretched
soul and gave his life for me. O love, amazing love, in Christ,
God's darling Son, he freely gave his life for me, a sinful,
wretched God." What can be said concerning this
statement by the Son of God? Believe it, I do, and explain
it, I can't. Preach it, I do with gladness.
Understand it, I don't. Don't even pretend to. The more
I study the dying agonies of the Son of God as our substitute,
the more I realize how utterly incomprehensible they are. The
things recorded in this one statement by our Savior, while it is beyond
the comprehension of any man, It contains and expresses greater
volumes of gospel truth than all that is written in all the
commentaries and theology books back there in my study. Martin
Luther, I've often told you, studied this text one time for
hours. He sat at his desk and read it
and meditated on it and cross-referenced the passages dealing with it.
And when he finished, he sat down and closed his Bible, hit
the desk with a thud, and he said, God forsaken of God, no
man can understand that, and no man can. The Lord Jesus Christ,
the Son of God, was forsaken by God his Father and our Father,
his God and our God, when he was made to be sin for us, so
that we might be forever accepted of God by the merits of his blood
and his perfect righteousness. Now, I want to show you three
things in this text of Scripture, and then I will try to answer
the question why. First, this text says a great
deal about our sin. Oh, the exceeding sinfulness
of sin. Now, once in the end of the world
we read, hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice
of himself. Why? Why did the Son of God,
why did that One who is Himself God, come into this world in
human flesh? Why did He assume our nature,
that He might put away sin? Because you and I, all of us,
are sinners. We are by nature sinners, but
that's not the greatest problem. We are sinners by choice. And
by deliberate effort and action, with every breath we take from
the time of conscious awareness of what sin is, we choose evil
and despise good. That's our nature. That's what
we are. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God, but
there's indescribably more in that statement than most people
understand. When the apostle tells us by inspiration that
we have all sinned, and come short of the glory of God. Not
only did we sin in our father Adam, but we have, every one
of us, willfully, with every breath we have drawn from the
days we came into this world, and until the day we leave this
world it'll be this way, we have transgressed God's holy law in
every point. The heart of man is enmity against
God. That's the reason for rebellion.
That's the reason for all the ungodliness there is in this
world. You young people, Strike out at mom and dad, I'm gonna
have my way, I'm gonna do my thing. You strike out at law,
you say I don't got no right to do this. You strike out at
every form of authority, say you got no right to require this
of me. Strike out at employers for one
reason, because you hate God. That's the reason, you hate God.
And you hate everything that resembles God in this world,
which is the following thing. Despise the idea that you are
not God. That's the nature of man. We
sin not in order that we become sinners, but rather we sin because
we are sinners. That's the nature of man. Not
only are we all sinners, and not only have we sinned and do
we sin continually, but sin is the cause of all the sickness,
all the grief, all the heartache, all the sorrow, all the pain,
all the bereavement, all the suffering, all the death there
is in this world. A few weeks ago, Audrey Grace
was going through a little bit more difficulty with some congestion
and sickness, and I wrote to faith, and I said, one of the
greatest evidences and demonstrations of human depravity, the universality
of depravity, is the sickness of those darling babies. Why
do they get sick? Because they're sinners. If they
weren't sinners, there wouldn't be any sickness. If there wasn't
corruption within, there'd be no corruption without. Sin is
that which brought the curse, and sin is that which brought
all things related to the curse that is upon mankind and upon
the earth. I got a letter last week from
a man. His mother's died, and he wrote to me very concerned.
He said, My mother, for as long as I can remember, has been a
believer, faithful woman. And I've been asking God to heal
her, and he's not going to heal her. It's become obvious she's
going to die. Why? And I wrote him back as
gently as I possibly could, with as much understanding and sympathy
as I could possibly muster for someone I have no knowledge of.
And I said, your mother is sick and she's dying because your
mother is a sinner. Now, that's the fact. That's
the fact. If she is, as you have indicated, a believer, her death
will soon make her completely well. But the cause of the sickness,
the cause of the death, The cause of the sorrow is sin, so horribly
evil is sin, that it cannot be put away by anything anybody
does except God himself, and even that, Merle, only by the
sacrifice of his son. That's what we read in Hebrews
chapter 10. Our Lord Jesus said, because the blood of goats and
calves could never take away sin, a body hast thou prepared
me. When He was born in the womb
of the Virgin, the Virgin birth is more than just a doctrine.
When we declare that Jesus Christ was born in the womb of the Virgin,
we're telling you that He was conceived immaculately by God
the Holy Spirit in the Virgin's womb, especially God prepared
a special body for Him by which He might redeem sinners such
as we are. a body without corruption, a body without nepotism, a body
without sin. And so the Lord Jesus came into
this world, a body prepared for him, joined his soul to that
body and lived in this world for us and died under the penalty
of God's law as our substitute to put away sin. Not all the
blood and beast on Jewish altar slain could give the guilty conscience
peace or wash away the stain. Those high priests would go in
every year and make sacrifices. On the Day of Atonement, they'd
offer the Paschal Lamb. Every morning, they'd get up
and offer sacrifices. Every night, before they go to bed, they'd
offer sacrifices. They'd keep the lights burning constantly
in the tabernacle and in the temple. All of those things showing
these two things. Number one, God demands that
sin be punished. A sacrifice must be made. And
number two, no sacrifice we make will ever take away sin. That's
what those ceremonies constantly said. Nothing we do will ever
take away sin, no matter how costly, no matter if it is divinely
appointed, no matter how serious, no matter how sincere we are.
What we do can never give the guilty conscience peace, because
what we do cannot wash away sin. It cannot. But I'll repent. Repentance
won't wash away sin. But I believe. Believing won't
wash away sin. But I have great faith. Great
faith won't wash away sin. Nothing but the blood of Jesus
Christ can put away sin. And he, having put away sin,
sat down on the right hand of God himself. How come? Because
now by his blood he has perfected forever them that are sanctified. Now that's what I see in the
text concerning our sin. It is such a horribly, indescribably,
infinite evil against God that it cannot be put away except
by the sacrifice of a man who is himself God. Now then, let
me show you something about our surety. I hear the Son of God
as he hangs upon the cursed tree, cry, My God, my God, why hast
thou forsaken me? And as I hear those words fall
from the lips of our Emmanuel, I see something of the complete
perfection of Christ's obedience to the Father as our sheriff
there. And we recognize that there is
no sense at all in which the Lord Jesus Christ, who is God
the Son, is secondary or subordinate to God the Father. We understand
that. We are Trinitarian, we worship
one God in the Trinity or Triunity of his three sacred persons,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit. So that the Father, the Son and
the Holy Spirit are equal in divinity, equal in eternality,
equal in all things without exception. They are one, one God. And yet,
in the covenant of grace, for the accomplishment of our redemption,
for the saving of our souls, there is a voluntary subordination
within the persons of the Sacred Trinity. The Son voluntarily
becomes Jehovah's righteous servant. And the Holy Spirit voluntarily
becomes that comforter who is sent into the world by the Son
of God as he ascends up into heaven, having accomplished redemption
for us. so that our Lord Jesus Christ,
in the covenant of grace, became our surety, as Jehovah's servant,
and willingly, voluntarily, made himself subject unto his Father's
will. Now here, as our Savior comes
to the end of his days, we hear him cry, My God, My God, why
hast thou forsaken me? And thus, he comes to the ultimate,
complete perfection of his obedience. You see, we could never obey
God perfectly. We could never do God's will
completely. I could not fulfill the demands
of God's holy law and neither could you. But the Son of God
became our surety in the covenant of grace and performed in our
stead as our federal head, as our legal representative, as
our substitute, everything that God required of us, everything.
Turn to Romans chapter 5. Romans chapter 5. I received
another letter earlier this week, and a fellow said, where do you
get the idea of suretyship and federal headship in the Word
of God? I said, Romans 5 verse 19. Right here it is, just plain
as does on your face. Whether you like it or don't,
whether you approve or disapprove, we have senators elected, legal
representatives in the Senate of the United States, who this
past week represented every one of us. What they did, we did
in them, representatively. Now whether you like it or not,
it's irrelevant. It's a matter of law. It's a matter of law.
They represent you, legally. They stand in your stead, legally. They are your federal heads.
Well, in a far, far greater sense, we have two federal heads. All
men, by nature, are in Adam, so that when Adam sinned, we
sinned in him. Whatever he did, we did in him. So I don't like that. Take it
up with God, that's the way it is. Romans chapter 5 verse 12.
And the Lord Jesus Christ, the last Adam, he is that one who's
the representative of God's covenant, chosen people, the elect of God. And here in Romans chapter 5
and verse 19, this is how the Apostle Paul declares Christ's
obedience. For as by one man's disobedience,
many were made sinners. That is, we legally were constituted
sinners by Adam's disobedience. So by the obedience of one shall
many be made legally constituted righteous. Jesus Christ, the
righteous one, is that one who obeyed God for us, so that his
righteousness is imputed to us. These words, my God, my God,
why hast thou forsaken me, are the words of the Son of God in
the zenith of his obedience to the Father. He was obedient unto
death. Apostle Paul in Philippians 2,
as he describes the humiliation of the Son of God, he says he
became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. That
means, Rex, from the time that he took his oath before God as
our surety. He said, lo, I come to do thy
will, O my God. He became God's obedient servant.
And he was obedient with every breath he drew until he finally
breathed his last breath and gave up the ghost. Obedient unto
death. You see, we are saved. We are
redeemed. We are justified. We are accepted
with God not only by the dying of the Lord Jesus, but also by
the doing of the Son of God. His doing was as necessary as
his dying. It is not enough merely that
we have a satisfaction for sin. It is not enough merely that
we have an atonement for sin. God demands righteousness. God demands obedience. God demands
perfection. And the Lord Jesus came here
to live before God as our representative, to do what we could never do
in all the perfection of his obedience. And it is that doing
of the Son of God which is imputed to us for righteousness. When
the thing was proposed to him in heaven, He said, Lo, I come
to do thy will, O my God, yea, thy law is written in my heart. And so this doing of the Father's
will was as necessary to our salvation as His dying as our
substitute. And even when He was totally
forsaken by the Father, He remained completely obedient. Do you now
trust Him? Right where you are, let me ask
you, can you, right now, Cast your soul on the merits of the
Son of God. Can you? You say, well, preacher,
I took care of that when I was a little boy. If that's the case,
I'm afraid you'd never have taken care of it. That's right. That's right. I took care of
that when I was 20 years old. If that's the case, I'm afraid
you'd never taken care of it. No, no. We don't base our hope of
acceptance before God on something that happened yesterday or this
morning. What are you basing it on? Right now, here I am,
a sinner. I cast my helpless, guilty, doomed,
damned soul on the merits of the Son of God. I trust Him. Now then, that being the case,
Bobby Estes, all that He did is mine. And if you trust Him,
all that He did is yours. Isn't that? All His obedience
is our obedience. We obeyed in Him. Just exactly
as you and I cast a vote in the Senate this past week in the
person of Mitch McConnell, we in the person of the Son of God
obeyed the Father's will perfectly in the full perfection of manhood
all the days of a man's life. That's righteousness. That's
righteousness. Now then, these words also express
the great, perfect, complete faith of the God-man as our substitute. We are justified by the faith
of Jesus Christ. By the faith of Jesus Christ. That's what Paul says in Galatians
2. What on earth does that mean? Our Lord Jesus, Gary, lived on
this earth in perfect faith as man. He believed God just like
we believe God, only perfectly. We couldn't We never could believe
God particularly. We never could believe Him as
He ought to be believed. But the Son of God, our Savior,
did. He said, My God, My God, in the midst of His greatest
trial, in the midst of His greatest academic. Robert Murray McShane
made this statement on this passage of Scripture. He said, Faith
is believing the Word of God. Not because we see it to be true,
or feel it to be true, but because God said it. Now that's a profound
statement. Faith is not believing this book
because we can get some scientific or logical or historical evidence
and say, now we see that it's true. Faith is not believing
God because, well, I feel it so. No, no, no, no. Feelings
are deceiving. What is faith? Faith is believing
the Word of God because God said it. That's all. That's all. Here is the Lord
Jesus Christ, forsaken by his Father, cast into outer darkness,
suffering the hail of God's wrath, and yet he believed God. He said,
thou wilt not leave my soul in hell. He didn't feel it. He couldn't
see it, but he believes it and cries, my God, my God. Like Job of old, he said, though
he slay me, yet will I trust him. Now, child of God, this is our
surety. We are often unbelieving. We
are often distrustful. How often it is that we have
just the slightest thing come up, and we fret, worry. We don't believe God. And yet
we're saved by faith. What? By the merit of our faith? Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. Sometimes
folks say, well, you know, I don't have enough faith. If you think
you've got enough, you haven't got any more life left. Well,
what are you talking about, Pastor? Steve, I don't trust my faith
in Christ. No, no, no, no. I trust His faith
as my substitute. You understand that? His obedience,
His faith, His belief in God, not my belief in Him. I cling
to Him. I rest in Him. Sometimes we have
some assurance of faith. Sometimes we have just a little
faith. Let me see if I can illustrate
it for you. Somebody said, well, you know, if you don't have assurance,
then you don't have faith. I ain't so sure about that. That woman with an issue of blood,
she comes with a trembling hand. And she says, if I could just
touch the hem of his garment, I'd be made whole. And she had
faith. She touched the hem of his garment
and tried to hide herself. But she was made whole just like
that. Peter, when he was walking on the water, the Lord Jesus
said, Peter, come to me on the water. And Peter began to walk
across the water. The waves of a storm raging around
him. He walking on water. And that's
not a joke. That's so. He's walking on water,
coming to the Son of God. Just as the man with confident
faith walks through the storms of this world unshaken as he
believes Christ. Walking to Christ. And then we
get to looking at the storms. We get to looking at the sea.
I begin to sink. Now Peter still had faith. But
he didn't have a lot of assurance then. He was sinking. And he
cries, Lord save me, I perish. But he still had faith. It is
not the measure of our faith that saves us. The object of
our faith is what saves us, and the object of our faith is the
Son of God. These words, My God, My God,
are words of great exemplary love and devotion as well. You
see, loving, devoted hearts sweetly surrender to the will of God. even when it is adverse to our
nature and contrary to what we think we desire. Job lost everything. Boy, that's a, that's a sweeping
statement, isn't it? He didn't really lose anything,
but it looked like he lost everything. So the preacher lost his sons,
God gave him twice as many as he had before. He lost his daughter,
God gave him twice as many as he had before. But he lost his
wealth, God gave him twice as much as he had before. But he
lost his name, God gave him twice as good a name as he had before.
He lost his wife, he said won't you curse God and die? God gave
him twice what he had before. Everything, everything. Well
what did Job do in the midst of all his trials? when everything
seemed to be gone, when he was covered from head to foot with
boils, and he was ashamed, and he was naked, and he was helpless,
and destitute. He had lost everything to the
eye of flesh. What'd he do? He bowed his head
and worshipped God. He said, I came into this world
naked, and I'm gonna leave this world naked, and it doesn't make
much difference what goes on in between. Eli had two sons. who were priests
in Israel. Two sons he raised to be priests.
Two sons who took the priestly office and used it in the most
vile manner possible to reprobate sons. And his sons behaved as
they did because Eli was an indulgent father and would not discipline
his sons. That's what God told him. And he said, now Eli, I'm
going to kill your boys and it's your fault. I'm going to kill
them and it's your fault. You indulged them. You didn't
teach them to fear my name. You didn't teach them to sanctify
me. And this is how Eli responded. It is the Lord. Let him do what
seemeth him good. That's love and devotion. That's love and devotion. The Shunammite whose son had
died When the prophet came and said, is it well with the child?
When the child was badly laid in the grave, this is what she
said, it is well with the child. Everything's all right. God's
in control. God's in control. But here is love and devotion
unrivaled, hanging upon the cursed tree, forsaken by God, his father
and our father, his God and our God, without one smile from heaven,
without one drop of mercy, without one comfort for his soul. with
all the horrendous agonies of hell crushing his very soul.
The Lord Jesus Christ loves God, even the God who now forsakes
him. He doesn't cry out, oh cruel,
merciless God. Oh no. He says, my God, my God,
why hast thou forsaken me? I see something here also about
our sin offering. You see, it's not enough that
we recognize our sin. It's not enough merely that we
confess our sin. It's not enough that we become
obedient or have righteousness. God still demands satisfaction. If Samuel or Samuel's children,
Samuel's wife or Samuel's parents, would come into the presence
of God, you've got to come with a sin offering that God will
accept. It's the only way you can come. It's the only way you
can come. And here's our sin offering. The Son of God hangs
upon the cursory tree and cries, my God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me? When the Lord Jesus was made
to be sin for us, He suffered all the consequences of sin as
our substitute to the full satisfaction of justice. He suffered the wrath
of God for us in all his mediatorial offices as prophet, priest, and
king. Emmanuel suffered in every part
of his body. His head, his cheeks, his back,
his hands, his feet, his side, every part of his body was made
to be a place for torment and agony. Our great Redeemer suffered
at the hands of the devil as well as the hands of men. In
Psalm 22, he said to the Father, save me from the lion's mouth.
And our Lord suffered at the hands of all sorts of men. He
suffered at the hands of Pilate, the Romans, the Jews, the high
priests, the scribes, the harlots, the drunkards. and he suffered
at the hands of his friends who betrayed him with a kiss, his beloved disciples who denied
him with an oath, and all of his disciples who in the hour
of his greatest agony forsook him. He was derided by the thieves
crucified with him. He was derided and mocked, spit
upon, and crucified. by many who were the objects
of his love. There he was dying for many who
dipped their hands in his blood. But the depth of his suffering, the hell he endured, is found
here, in the sufferings heaped upon him. by God the Father,
and he cries, my God, my God. Why has thou forsaken me? Who is this one forsaken? Me. Your son whom you just a while
ago said, this is my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased.
Me, your servant who has come to this place because of my obedience
to you. Who forsook him? My God." Our Lord said, "'Is it nothing
to you? O ye that pass by, behold, and see if there be any sorrow
like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, wherewith the Lord
hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger.'" What did the Lord God do with
his darling son? He forsook him. Oh, the infinite
abyss of hell, the Lord Jesus waded through to satisfy the
justice of God for us. Without one comfort from God,
without any mercy from God, without any acceptance, not even a hint
of acceptance from God, without God, He endures the wrath of
God for us. Now why? Because He agreed to
it. before the world began. He set
his face like a flint to go up to Jerusalem. This is what he
had sworn he would do as our covenant surety. He had assumed
total responsibility for his people and for our sins. And
now he's come to pay our debt. Why was he forsaken? Because
he was made to be sin for us. who knew no sin, that we might
be made a righteousness of God in Him. My God, my God, why hast Thou
forsaken me? Amen.