This made the Psalmist plead, “Hide not thy face from me put not thy servant away in anger.” We can bear a bleeding body, and even a wounded spirit but a soul conscious of desertion by God is beyond conception unendurable. This is the greatest of all weights that can press upon the heart. Like David, he dialogues with himself, and he enquires, “Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? Hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him.” But if the Lord be once withdrawn, if the comfortable light of his presence be shadowed even for an hour, there is a torment within the breast, which I can only liken to the prelude of hell. A man may bear great depression of spirit about worldly matters, if he feels that he has his God to go to. Spiritual sorrows are the worst of mental miseries. You can pluck up courage and endure the pang of sickness and pain, so long as the spirit is hale and brave but if the soul itself be touched, and the mind becomes diseased with anguish, then every pain is increased in severity, and there is nothing with which to sustain it. Grief of mind is harder to bear than pain of body. By the help of the Holy Spirit, let us first dwell upon THE FACT or, what our Lord suffered. The answer flowed softly into the soul of the Lord Jesus without the need of words, for he ceased from his anguish with the triumphant shout of, “It is finished.” His work was finished, and his bearing of desertion was a chief part of the work he had undertaken for our sake. “Why hast thou forsaken me?” Then, thirdly, we will consider the answer or, what came of his suffering. Secondly, we will note, the enquiry or, why he suffered: this word “why” is the edge of the text. Our first subject of thought will be the fact or, what he suffered- God had forsaken him.
See with what a price he hath redeemed us from the curse of the law! As you see this, say to yourselves: What manner of people ought we to be! What measure of love ought we to return to one who bore the utmost penalty, that we might be delivered from the wrath to come? I do not profess that I can dive into this deep: I will only venture to the edge of the precipice, and bid you look down, and pray the Spirit of God to concentrate your mind upon this lamentation of our dying Lord, as it rises up through the thick darkness-“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” You shall measure the height of his love, if it be ever measured, by the depth of his grief, if that can ever be known. I have chosen this subject that it may help the children of God to understand a little of their infinite obligations to their redeeming Lord. We will adore where we cannot comprehend. This anguish of the Saviour on your behalf and mine is no more to be measured and weighed than the sin which needed it, or the love which endured it. Here you may look as into a vast abyss and though you strain your eyes, and gaze till sight fails you, yet you perceive no bottom it is measureless, unfathomable, inconceivable. Here the wormwood and the gall, and all the other bitternesses, are outdone.
#Eli eli lama sabachthani full
This is his dolorous lament from the lowest pit of misery- “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” I do not think that the records of time, or even of eternity, contain a sentence more full of anguish. He had reached the culminating point of his anguish. He had trodden the winepress now for hours, and the work was almost finished. Our Lord was then in the darkest part of his way. There is light in it, bright, flashing light but there is a centre of impenetrable gloom, where the soul is ready to faint because of the terrible darkness. Expect not to see through its every word, as though it came from on high as a beam from the unclouded Sun of Righteousness.
“THERE was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour”: this cry came out of that darkness. “And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”- Matthew xxvii.
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