Our scripture reading is from the Gospel of Matthew chapter 27, reading from verse 32, although the focus will be exclusively, although I hope contextually, on the 46th verse. We're breaking into the passion narrative, almost reaching its climax. The Son of God, the Eternal Word has come into the world to seek and to save the lost. He has come to lay down His life, a ransom for many. He has come to do what only God was able to do, that He might save a people for His praise. And we come to this climactic moment when we read in verse 32, as they went out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name. They compelled this man to carry his cross. And when they came to a place called Golgotha, which means place of a skull, they offered him wine to drink mixed with gall. But when he tasted it, he would not drink it. And when they had crucified him, they divided his garments among them by casting lots. Then they sat down and kept watch over him there. And over His head they put the charge against Him, which read, This is Jesus, the King of the Jews. Then two robbers were crucified with Him, one on the right and one on the left. And those who passed by derided Him, wagging their heads and saying, You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself. If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross. So also the chief priests with the scribes and elders mocked Him, saying, He saved others. He cannot save Himself. He is the King of Israel. Let Him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in Him. He trusts in God. Let God deliver Him now, if He desires Him. For He said, I am the Son of God. And the robbers who were crucified with him also reviled him in the same way. Now from the sixth hour, there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani. That is my God. My God, why? Have you forsaken me? And some of the bystanders hearing it said, this man is calling Elijah. And one of them at once ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink. But the other said, wait, let us see whether Elijah will come and save him. And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His Spirit. Father, we pray that the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts would be pleasing and acceptable in Your sight. O Lord, our rock and our Redeemer, through Jesus Christ our Lord we ask it. Amen. The Bible is the Word of God. It has sprung from heaven and sprung with authority, but also with profundity. It shouldn't surprise us that when we daily encounter the Word of God, that we will find ourselves out of our depths. During the Christmas season, the Advent season, we've been thinking about the glorious coming of the Son of God into our world. And there's one text in particular that constantly is in my mind throughout the whole Advent season. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. I've thought about those words for 50 years now as a believer. I'm no further forward after 50 years of pondering and preaching than I was when I first began. And the Word The word who was in the beginning, who was with God and who was God became flesh. The uncontainable joins the containable to himself. The one who has neither beginning of days nor end of life becomes a true seed of humanity in a virgin's womb. You can parse the sentence, I can parse the sentence, but I can't begin to fathom the immensity and the profundity of the sentence. And the Word became flesh. But there's another text that often comes into my mind in conjunction with that text. And it's the text that I want us to focus on this evening, verse 46 in Matthew chapter 27. Jesus cries with a loud voice saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? That's another verse that would be easy to parse if you know what parsing is. But I think Augustine was only too right when he wrote on one memorable occasion, we speak about God only so that we do not remain silent. And what he meant was that we need to understand we're dealing with immensities and infinities. We know the outskirts of God's ways. But we're left breathless, lost in wonder, love, and praise. That's where biblical exposition ought always to lead us. If it doesn't lead us to being lost in wonder, love, and praise, there is something wrong. There is a disconnect somewhere. That's why when Paul, having come to the conclusion of his remarkable exposition of the gospel of God, as he calls it, in his letter to the Romans, in verse 33 of chapter 11, he comes to summate all that he has been saying, and he says, oh, the depths. Oh, the depths, both of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are His judgments. His paths are beyond tracing out. Paul is saying, I've done my utmost. I've done my best to explain the wonders of God in the giving of His Son, Jesus Christ, but I need to tell you I'm out of my depth. For His judgments are unsearchable, His paths are beyond tracing out. There is a holy, reverent agnosticism about the Apostle Paul. He's saying, I'm out of my depths, I've gone so far, as far as the Holy Spirit enables humanity to go as we press our way into the infinitude of the revelation of God. And I need to tell you, I'm out of my depths. I'm out of my depths. And if there is any text in the New Testament that takes us out of our depths, it is this text in Matthew 27, 46. And I want us, as we look into a new year, to reflect on this, because here we are brought to the very heart of the gospel of God. We're brought to the very core. of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. This is what angels longed to look into and were bewildered by. And I want first of all to notice with you who it is who is crying out in extremity. The language is very striking. We're told that with a loud cry, Jesus said, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? It wasn't a whisper. He's in extremity. Life is ebbing from Him. The unimaginable pain and suffering of crucifixion must have wracked every fiber of His being. And it's with a loud cry, an elemental cry, But he says, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Who is this man who sees himself forsaken by God? Well, of course, Matthew and the other gospel writers have told us prior to this who He is. He is the eternal Word made flesh. He is God the Son incarnate. He is the one who, when he entered into the sphere of his public ministry, saw the heavens open and the voice from the Father above splitting the cosmos and saying, this is my beloved Son. This is who it is who is crying out. He is the beloved of the Father. But now he finds himself enshrouded in darkness. We're told that there was a supernatural darkness over the face of the earth, over all the land, from the sixth hour, midday, till the ninth hour. Now darkness, of course, is a recurring note throughout Scripture. You remember how we first encounter the Word in almost the opening words of the book of Genesis. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void. Darkness was upon the face of the deep. Before the Lord God formed and shaped by His will and purpose and power through the days of creation A cosmos, there was darkness. And then that note you find comes again to the fore in the ninth plague, in the book of Exodus, when darkness for three days covers the face of the land. Darkness. A sign of God's judgment and of abandonment, if we had time to trace it through the Scriptures. Judgment and abandonment, and yet here is the Son of the Father's love, my beloved Son. There is a mystery at the very heart of the gospel of God. Oh, you say, Ian, but we can say this, and we can say this, and we can say this. Yes, we can. And I hope there will be much we can say. But this is where I want you to begin and where I want myself to begin. We need to understand that we are being confronted here with the unfathomable, the unimaginable. God, forsaking God. Who could believe it?" said John Rabbi Duncan, the famous Scottish Presbyterian Hebraist. This is who it is who is crying out elementally. And the question that then surely arises is, well, how can it be? How can it be that the beloved son of the Father is here crying out in his forsakenness. How can this be for this one reason? For this one reason. He is where he is, not as a private man, but as a covenant head. He is where He is as the divinely appointed representative head of the people of God. He has come into the world to stand before God in our place. That's the great significance of His baptism at the inauguration of His public ministry. He stands in the midst of the waters. As it were, the sin that was being washed away, if I can use the language, was washing over him. And John, remember, says, Lord, what are you doing here? This is a baptism of repentance. You have nothing to repent of. And he says, suffer it to be so now, John, to fulfill all righteousness. I am where I am, not in my capacity as a private man, but in my capacity as the God-appointed covenant head. That's why there is no injustice in God. Towards the middle years of the 19th century, liberal German theologians began to posit the injustice of the whole evangelical scheme of redemption. The innocent one dying in the place of the guilty ones. It's iniquitous, they said. But they did not take account of who Jesus Christ was. He had come into this world to be the representative covenant head and substitute of His people. He was righteously condemned. And this is who it is who is crying out in His extremity, in His sinless bewilderment. He had only ever known the smile of the Father, even in the garden of Gethsemane. An angel was sent from heaven to strengthen him. No angel, no voice, no comfort. All the lights have gone out. This is who it is who is crying out in extremity. But secondly, perhaps even more pertinently, why is He hanging there on that Roman cross? Why is the beloved Son of the Father there in the first place? Well, there are three things I want simply to highlight. He is there in obedience to His Father. I've come from heaven, John 6, 38. I've come from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent me. I've come as the obedient better than Adam. This is God's better than Adam. The last Adam to the fight and to the rescue had come. And he is where he is in his obedience to the will of the heavenly Father. He is not acting autonomously like Adam. He is acting humbly and obediently as God's better than Adam. He is where he is in obedience to his Father. But he is where he is secondly as the Father's gift of love to the world. We know these words so well that they trip off our tongues. God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. And it is begotten, not one and only. Genetum non factum est. Begotten, not created. He is the gift of the Father's love to the world. That's why He's there. God so loved the world. And the point of that language is not for us to marvel at the extent of God's love, but at the sheer grace of His love. This world that is in rebellion against God, it is shrouded in the darkness of sin and Satan. The whole world lies in the evil one. It is into this world that God sent His only begotten Son. He is there as the Father's gift of love, bewilderingly, amazingly. Who can fathom it? Who can fathom it? That this is who Jesus Christ is? That's why John Owens said, the love of God is the fountainhead of the gospel. It's the fountainhead of the gospel. Sometimes, maybe not often, but occasionally I've heard usually younger men preaching John 3.16, and they spend half the time telling me what the world doesn't mean. I'm sitting there shaking my head and say, tell me, tell me, brother, about the love of God that sent His Son into the world. Tell me about that. So concerned, lest anyone could dare to even think there was a trace of Arminianism in their universality of language. He's there in obedience to the Father. He's there as the gift of the Father's love to the world. But he's there thirdly because he loves his sheep. Yes, he's there in obedience to the Father. He's there as the appointed covenant head of the people of God. He's there as the Father's gift of love to the world. But there is a holy harmony in the Trinity. And the love that the Father has for the world is a love that corresponds to the Son's love for the world. You know those great words in John 10, isn't it? Verse 17, the reason the Father loves me is because I lay down my life for my sheep. Why are you there, Lord Jesus? because I love my sheep. He's there that we might not be there. He died that we might be forgiven. Don't you love those words? You know the hymn, there is a green hill far away. He died that we might be forgiven. No man takes my life from me. I lay it down of my own accord. I embrace the Father's love for His people in my self-offering. But then thirdly, I want to ask this question, what was the forsakenness He was experiencing? He says, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Let me say, first of all, it was a real forsakenness. It wasn't an imagined forsakenness. My sin is not imaginary. The sin that was laid on Christ was not imaginary. The forsakenness wasn't something he felt, but it wasn't really true that the father would never forsake the son. He was truly forsaken. Let me tell you first what that doesn't mean. It doesn't mean there was a rupture in the Holy Trinity. It didn't mean that within the blessed unity and community of the Holy Trinity, there was any semblance of rupture. That's why we need to be careful with what we sing. You know, we sing the words, emptied himself of all but love. That's bad, bad theology. He didn't empty himself of anything. Now, some of you are sitting thinking, ah, Ian, you don't know your Bible. Well, I do know Philippians 2, 7. He out on Ekanosen, himself he emptied. So what can you mean by saying he didn't empty himself of anything? Read the text, read the text, read the text. Himself he emptied, what's the next word? Taking, taking, taking the form of a servant. He emptied Himself by adding to Himself. He didn't stop being who He was. He didn't empty Himself of all but love. He became a servant. He veiled His glory in the frailty of our flesh. He didn't stop being who He was. There was no dismemberment within the Holy Trinity. Well, what then was it? And here I think we need to tread, as it were, on holy ground. The early church fathers were often so reluctant to speak positively about the hypostatic union, that unity in Christ of two natures. They were reluctant because they felt they were out of their depth, and they would use negative adverbs and adjectives. They would say what it wasn't. They were more comfortable with Negative theology at times than with positive theology. This is what it wasn't. He didn't become an admixture. He didn't become a confusion. What was this cry of forsakenness? First of all, it was a cry of sinless perfection. The one who cried was the sinless one of God, holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners. Which of you accuses me of sin? It was a cry of sinless perfection. It was a cry of sin-bearing substitution. The tragedy of sin is that it will eternally separate you from the life of God and make you eternally subject to His unending wrath. And on the cross, Jesus Christ is experiencing the forsakenness that our sin rightly and righteously deserves. It's a cry of sin-bearing substitution. He's experiencing the hell that my sin, your sin against God, deserved. And thirdly, it was a cry of bruised but unbowed faith. For the first time, Jesus can't take the language of father upon his lips. He doesn't say, my father, my father, why have you forsaken me? All the lights have gone out. I've often thought of these words and wondered where the accent should lie. Is it in my God? Or is it in my God? Or is it in my God, why? Or is it in my God, why have you? Or my God, why have you forsaken? Or my God, why have you forsaken me? You could make a good argument for accepting any one of these. But I increasingly think that the accent lies here. My God, my God, why have you, you who at my baptism said, this is my beloved son, with him I'm well pleased. You who split the heavens at my transfiguration and said, again, this is my beloved son, why have you forsaken me? But do you notice that though The fatherly relation is eclipsed. The personal relationship remains. My God. I think it was Martin Luther who said, the Christian faith is all about personal pronouns. The Son of God loved me and gave himself for me. And here as the darkness enshrouds him, as all hell is unleashed against him, that little personal pronoun remains. His faith is being stretched to the utmost, forsakenness, abandonment, but my God, my God. Jesus Christ was experiencing the weight of the divine wrath that our sin deserved, and there was no support from heaven. There was no voice to say, go on son, all will be well. You say, but surely he knew, surely he knew that he would rise, that the last word would not be suffering and death. Ah, did he know that? Absolutely he did. Did he know it at that moment? Absolutely he did not. Because if He knew it at that moment, He could not have become our Savior. It would have meant His humanity was an unreal humanity, a superman humanity. But He had not come to be a superman. He had come to be a true man. of faith who would stand before God in our place, giving Him the loving obedience and faithfulness that Adam failed to give. And so if you ask then, well, Ian, how did he manage to endure the cross? How did he manage not to collapse under the weight of the divine wrath? because of the Holy Trinity. You know these great words in Hebrews 9, 14, isn't it? He offered himself unblemished to God, upheld by the Holy Spirit. Throughout the whole course of His life, from womb to cross and beyond, the Lord Jesus was upheld in His holy, frail humanity by the ministry of the Holy Spirit. I think you know there are Christians, fine Christians, who think there's a kind of conduit or channel from the deity of the Son into the humanity of the Son that would destroy salvation by faith. As we were thinking this morning, He is the pioneer, the perfecter, the originator, and the completer of faith. He is the archegos, and He lived by faith and upheld by the Holy Spirit. And that was the promise of God, wasn't it, in the old covenant Scriptures? I will put my Spirit upon Him, Isaiah 42, and previous to that, Isaiah 11. I will put my Spirit upon Him, and He will be upheld. And as all the lights go out, He cries out in sinless perplexity. My God, my God, why? Let me say three things in conclusion, trying to bring some kind of application. Although, as I said this morning, I think we talk too much about application separately from exposition. Exposition should be all application. I think that was said of Jonathan Edwards, all his exposition was application and all his application was exposition. Doctrine rightly understood is rich in application. Martin Busser, who so influenced John Calvin Busser, the great Strasbourg reformer. Calvin was there for two and a half years, 1538 to early 1541. Busser wrote on one occasion, true theology, is never theoretical, it is always practical. The end of it is to live a godly life in esequidem deiformem. The end of it is to live a godly life. Let me say three things. First of all, what our Savior did should lead us to endless adoration. The primary mark of a believer should be adoration, loving, thankful adoration that God should so love me as to give up to such a death His only Son for me. I wonder what you think is your, what holds you back most in your Christian life? What holds you back most, do you think? Well, let me quote to you, John Owen Ryan will be pleased if nobody else. Our greatest hindrance in the Christian life is not our lack of effort, but our lack of acquaintedness with our privileges. Our forefathers were always saying to their congregations, live up to your privileges, and our greatest privilege is that God loves us, gave His Son for us, that we might become His sons and daughters. Endless adoration, and then secondly, endless dedication. When Paul comes to the end of his exposition of the gospel and concludes his doxology at the end of Romans 11, from him, through him, and to him are all things. To him be the glory. How does he begin? Chapter 12, therefore I beseech you brothers by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice. This is not where we're to aim at after 5, 10, 15, 20 years of discipleship. This is where discipleship begins. It begins with bringing all that we are and giving all that we are to Him who gave all that He had for us. You know, the problem with a lack of dedication in my life and perhaps in your life is down simply to this, we do not rightly, rightly grasp the wonder of the love of God. We talk about the cross. We sing about the cross. Some of us preach about the cross. We even write about it. But our lives say you've not begun to begin, to enter into the wonder of it. Because if you did, you'd be living very differently, Ian Hamilton, from how you live. where the whole realm of nature mine, that were an offering far too small. Do you believe that? That love so amazing, so divine, demands sweetly your soul, your life, your all. But then thirdly, it should provoke in us repentance. repentance. Some of you know Martin Luther's Ninety-Five Theses. Three weeks before the Ninety-Five, he wrote the Ninety-Seven Theses, which actually I think are far more interesting than the Ninety-Five. They're far more Augustinian. But some of you will know the very first of the Ninety-Five Theses. When our Lord Jesus Christ said, repent, he meant that the whole of our life was to be repentance. And what he meant by that was there will never be a day that we don't need to come to the Lord and say, Father, I repent before You above all of this that I do not prize and cherish Your Son as I ought. Isn't that what grieves you? Isn't that what causes you to marvel at yourself? Don't you think of yourself as a mystery? How can I, so blessed, so privileged, so enriched, live the way I do when Almighty God split the heavens, became flesh, was immolated on a Roman cross, endured hell that I might enjoy heaven. That's why when people are struggling with obedience, you never preach obedience to them. Never, never, never, never preach obedience to people who are struggling with obedience. Preach Jesus Christ to them. And having done that, look to see how that leads to obedience. It's called the grammar of the gospel. Preach Christ. Preach Christ. As I said at the beginning, some verses are easy to parse. But oh my, they're harder to explain. May the Lord help us as much as we are able to take at least something to heart from these elemental words. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And if we could have heard into the portals of heaven, I have no doubt we would have heard the Father saying, for them, my son, for them. Amen. Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, lift up your heads and open your eyes, and by faith receive the blessing of the Triune God, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.