Good Friday

According to Jewish custom, a new day began at 6:00am. So when we read that Jesus was crucified at the third hour, this is understood to be at 9:00 a.m. So for three hours He hung in the morning sunlight; but then at the sixth hour, at noon, darkness spread over the land.

The prophet Amos, 700 years before, prophesied this: "And on that day," declares the Lord God, I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight. I will turn your feasts into mourning and all your songs into lamentation; I will bring sackloth on every waist and baldness on every head; I will make it like the mourning for an only son and the end of it like a bitter day. (Amos 8:9-10)

Darkness at noon and the mourning for an only son.

Just like in Egypt at the time of Moses, the plague of darkness preceded the final plague: death of the firstborn son. This time, however, it is God's Only Son. Jesus' death occurs on the same day of the very plague that gave Israel the Feast of Passover: the blood of the Lamb has brought deliverance once again.

My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?

Jesus’ death on the cross is not a secondary or peripheral theme of Scripture, rather it is the crucial doctrine of our faith. Interestingly, from the Latin word for cross (crux) comes our English word “crucial.” The cross is absolutely crucial to our faith because without it, we have no thing and no one in whom to put our faith.

At the cross we can see the love of God in its most dramatic splendor and heartfelt mercy. The cross is God’s farthest reach. The cross is God’s most ambitious rescue effort when Jesus came to our side of the cosmic chasm, willing to suffer in our place.

From the cross, Jesus cried out 7 statements — the seven cries from the cross. Matthew is the only Gospel writer to record the words of one of these cries however — what theologians have called “the cry of dereliction.” Jesus exclaiming, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me,” was the middle of the seven cries and leads us further into the wonder of Jesus’ atoning sacrifice in our place.

Up to this moment on the cross, though forsaken by men, Jesus could still say, “Yet I am not alone, for my Father is with me“ (John 16:32). However, now in the darkness that came over the land, He was alone. An actual and dreadful separation took place between the Father and the Son as Jesus expressed the horror of this multi-faceted darkness by quoting the only Scripture which could accurately describe it — Psalm 22, which describes the cruel persecution of an innocent and godly man.

The contrast between Golgotha and even 9 hours before in Gethsemane was colossal.

In the Gethsemane, Jesus has a Father who strengthens Him. On the cross at Golgotha, He has a Father who turns away from Him.

In Gethsemane, He can call twelve legions of angels who would have delivered Him. At Golgotha, He cries to the Father, who refuses deliverance

In Gethsemane, Jesus is tempted to forsake the Father. At Golgotha, the Father forsook Jesus.

Think even further about the question Jesus asks. Forsaken is a powerful word:

A man forsaken by his father. A wife forsaken by her husband. A son forsaken by his father. Jesus had been the object of the Father’s love from all eternity.

But Why Was Jesus Forsaken for Me?

Two thousand years before this moment, Abraham was asked to kill his son Isaac on an altar at the top of Mount Moriah, but just as his knife was raised to the sky, God intervened so that Isaac’s life was spared. But the voice that called out on Mount Moriah was silent at Golgotha. So why now was the Son forsaken by the Father?

The Pharisees standing at a distance from the cross could not have given an answer. The priests would not understand nor would the Roman soldiers. Even today, many people don’t understand why God would forsake anyone, especially His Son whom He loves!

The great reason is found in the Scripture Jesus quoted — Psalm 22. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest. Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel” (Psalm 22:1-3).

“The Son was forsaken because the Father’s holiness required it. The prophet Nahum asked a question himself: “Who can stand before his indignation? Who can endure the heat of his anger? His wrath poured out like fire, and the rocks are broken into pieces by him” (Nahum 1:6). Only Jesus could withstand the indignation of the Father against sin and only Jesus could take the wrath we so deserved.

Remember that the Pharisees and priests regarded Jesus as a blasphemer and great sinner, but on the cross the Father regarded Him as a sinner and the one who would bear the sins of many. Jesus became legally guilty of our sin, and for that He was judged.

Think of it: Jesus was legally guilty of genocide, child abuse, alcoholism, murder, adultery, greed and all things imaginable and unimaginable.

Jesus was cursed in our place, that we might be set free. Paul writes that “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us” (Gal 1:3). Jesus was forsaken by God that we might be able to cling to the promise that God will “never leave or forsake us” (Heb 13:5). “. He was condemned that we might be able to say, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Rom 8:1). He was cursed that we might be blessed. He suffered hell for us so that we can enjoy heaven with Him.

And so we can sing the old hymn, “Guilty, vile, and helpless we; Spotless Lamb of God was He; “Full atonement!” can it be? Hallelujah! What a Savior!”