Well, please stand as we hear God's Word, first of all from Psalm 22. I'll actually just read the first eight verses and then proceed to Matthew 27. The 22nd Psalm, you'll notice it's a Psalm of David. The opening words are the words that we will focus on this morning, words that Our Lord Jesus Christ uttered as he found himself engulfed by the darkness of our sin. To the choir master, according to the Doe of the Dawn, a psalm of David. 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. In you our fathers trusted. They trusted and you delivered them. To you they cried and were rescued. In you they trusted and were not put to shame. But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by mankind and despised by the people. All who see me mock me. They make mouths at me, they wag their heads. He trusts in the Lord. Let him deliver him. Let him rescue him, for he delights in him." Then in the gospel of Matthew chapter 27 from verse 45. Now from the sixth hour, that is midday, 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, lemme 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. And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom, and the earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. And coming out of the tombs after his resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many. When the centurion and those who were with him, keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were filled with awe and said, truly, this was the Son of God. There were also many women there, looking on from a distance, who had followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to Him, among whom were Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee." We read in the 46th verse of Matthew 27, and about the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice saying, Eli, Eli, lemma sabachthani, that is, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? In our previous three sessions, we looked at the passion narrative of our Lord Jesus Christ from something of a wide-angled lens, walking our way, as it were, through the unfolding narrative of the gospel story. I want in this session this morning to abandon the wide-angled lens and to camp on this 46th verse. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? As he finds himself impaled to a Roman cross, As he sees the betrayal of Judas, the denial of Peter and the desertion of all his chosen disciples, and as heaven remains silent, God the Son in our flesh cries out. It's a very strong Greek verb, kratso. He cried out from the very depths of his being, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? It's striking that in this ultimate extremity of his earthly life, that it's the words of the book of Psalms that we find on the lips of our Lord Jesus Christ. It's a very remarkable fact, a very striking fact that 59 of the 150 Psalms are laments. Forty percent, forty percent of the songbook of God's old covenant church were laments. Forty percent, let me say it again, forty percent of the songbook of God's old covenant church were laments. It's a very striking figure, isn't it? I almost despair when I look at modern hymns. Some of them I like very, very much. There is a higher throne, I think it's one of the finest hymns that have been penned in recent years, and Christ alone, and delight to sing them. But so many hymns, I look around and think, but where are the laments? Where are the laments? And there are 40% laments in the Psalter, surely because the life of faith is a life that is marked and marred in this fallen world by trial and trouble and difficulty and sadness and bewilderment. Where would we be without the Psalter? What would poor, sad, depressed Christians have to sing if we didn't have the book of Psalms? I don't mean that the Christian life is all doom and gloom. You know I don't mean that. There are times when there is joy unspeakable and full of glory. There are times when we can't pray, not because we don't have words to pray, because we don't have the emotional strength to express the wonder of the gospel of God in Jesus Christ. The Christian life is punctuated with moments and more than moments of heightened experience, but We live, as Paul puts it in Romans 8, isn't it, 18, we live in the midst of the sufferings of this present time. We live in the midst of a world that's passing away. And we live out our Christian lives in bodies that are weak and frail and fragile. Sin remains to trouble us. And it's not surprising that the Lord Jesus Christ finds the book of Psalms coming to His mind in His extremity. It's an interesting question to ask. I don't think there's an easy answer to give. Did the Lord Jesus Christ know the whole of what we call the whole Old Testament? Had He memorized it all? Possibly He had. It wasn't uncommon for rabbis to know the whole from Genesis to 2 Chronicles, which is where the Hebrew Bible ends. They would be able to start, they just would go on and on and on. You think, my goodness me. How on earth could they do that? Well, if our Lord did indeed know the Scriptures that intimately, it wasn't because there was a conduit from his divine nature penetrating his human nature. He tells us in the Third Servant song, morning by morning he wakens my ear to hear as one who is taught. He wasn't excused the rigors of maturative education. He had to apply himself in his holy humanity. Remember how at the Temptations he's able to ransack the book of Deuteronomy, and twice from chapter eight, isn't it, and twice from chapter six, he repulses Satan by such apposite, appropriate texts of Scripture that spoke into his situation. But here we find him in his absolute extremity. And it's the words of the 22nd Psalm that come to his mind. Up till this point, our Lord Jesus Christ could only anticipate what lay before him. But now he is experiencing what from times eternal He had pledged Himself to, and from the incarnation in the womb of the Virgin He had publicly embraced, He would be the sin-bearing Savior of the world, no matter what it would cost. And so he cries, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? I've read these words, as you have, hundreds, I guess thousands of times, and wonder where the accent should lie. Is it my, my God, my God? Or is it my God, my, why? Or is it, my God, why have you, you? Or is it, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? The son that you have loved from times eternal. The son who, when I publicly embraced my divine commission and calling in the waters of baptism, and had the Spirit descend upon me to equip me for the mission and ministry pledged in times eternal, you split the heavens to speak, this is my beloved Son." You could almost feel the, dare I use the word, the emotion of the Father. the emotive passion of the father as he says, this is my beloved son, as he looks on in admiration and unbounded fatherly admiration, as he sees the son that he has loved from times eternal embracing the road that would lead to Calvary. And then in the Mount of Transfiguration, you have this punctuation as the Savior sets His face to Jerusalem. You have this divine punctuation where, remember, Moses and Elijah appear and Jesus is metamorphosed and He shines brighter than the noonday sun. And again, the voice from the heavens, this is my beloved Son. you would think when he needed that voice more than at any other time, heaven is silent. Heaven is silent. Augustine, the great early church father, said on one occasion, I only speak so as I don't remain silent. And what he meant was that God is so glorious and infinite and deep, and His way is so glorious and infinite and deep, and His salvation so glorious and infinite and deep, that there are no words adequate to express the wonder. And so he says, well, notwithstanding, we just use what we have. And this is a text that if I'm honest, it takes me out of all my comfort zones, leaves me uncertain. I'm never quite sure, to be honest with you this morning, I'm never quite sure how to begin to begin to express in some way this text. It can't be explained. It cannot be explained. But I think in some poor measure, it can be expressed. And I want just to notice five things with you about this elemental cry. And there is no text more profound in the whole Bible than this. There is no text more profoundly deep than what we read here. In a loud voice, Jesus cried out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? So let me mention just five things very briefly, simply. Number one, it was a cry of sinless perplexity. It was a cry of sinless perplexity. The Holy One who knew no sin cries, why? The humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ was a true humanity. He didn't simply appear to be a man. He became flesh. He became what he was not, not to divest himself of it at a later time. He became flesh. His humanity was real, it was substantial, and it's in that holy humanity that he cries out why God's ways with him are beyond his understanding. His humanity is not omniscient. You'll notice he can't even use the word Father. It's the first time. It's the only time. filial relationship that He had known from times eternal and in His holy humanity from the incarnation to this point is lost to Him. It's my God, my God, not my Father, my Father. That's been eclipsed. The darkness that has descended over the earth is sacramental of the darkness that's increasingly engulfing His human soul. If we had time, we could trace this theme, this note of darkness back to the very beginning, Genesis 1. God, there was darkness over the face of the deep, and then you go on to Exodus and the penultimate play, God sends darkness, and then there is deliverance, but only after the darkness. We don't have time. You can trace it through yourself. But the simple point to notice is that the Son of God in His holy, sinless humanity knew perplexity. Perplexity is woven into the fabric of His humanity. If He hadn't been perplexed, He wouldn't have been truly human. Maybe some of you here this morning are here because, well, you're not quite sure why you're here. You're here and you're heavy of heart and you're finding life hard and perplexities abound. Here is a Savior who knows perplexity because He experienced perplexity. He is able to help us because He knows what it is to be like us. We have a great high priest, says the writer to the Hebrews, who is not untouched by the feelings of our infirmities, but who has been tempted in all points such as we are, yet without sin. Therefore, with boldness, come to the throne of God's grace. It's a cry of sinless perplexity. It's a culminating cry because actually this note of perplexity was a developing note in the Lord's life. Listen to these words. Would you think these words could ever come from the lips of the sinless one? I have labored in vain. I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity." I've often said to students, who in the Bible do you think said, my life's being a waste of space? They say, oh, goodness, oh, well, was it Job? No, no, no, it wasn't Job. And they'll give me various answers. No one has yet said, the Son of God in my flesh said it. My life's been vanity. You need to think about that. If he hadn't said that, he couldn't have been our Savior, because his humanity would have been a charade. This is holy, sinless perplexity that is crying out on Calvary's cross. Secondly, it's a cry of sin-bearing substitution. I've been trying to say in these previous sessions that the Gospels are rich in theology. Not the way that Paul concatenates statements and presents us with, you know, Romans 3, 21 to 26, the most condensed paragraph ever written in human history. You know, theology condensed and rich and profound. The gospels do it in a very discreet but profound way. The theology's woven almost discreetly into the unfolding narrative of redemptive history. And here is the culmination almost of Matthew's gospel. where he has been step by step showing us that Jesus has come into the world as a covenant head, not as a private man. He's come to stand before God for all who would believe in him. That's the whole point of his baptism. John says, what on earth are you doing coming to be baptized by me? Baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. What are you doing? I need to be baptized by you. And Jesus says, let it be. to fulfill all righteousness. He comes to stand where we stand before God, needing the forgiveness of sins, the salvation of God. He's identifying Himself with fallen sinful humanity. And the dirt, as it were, the dirt and the grime of water baptism would have come upon him. He's identifying himself. And now we come to this omega point of identification, where he dies the just for the unjust to bring us to God. Or in his own language, I've come to give myself a ransom. instead of the many," Mark 10, 45, Lutron antipollon, a ransom instead of the many. It's a cry of sin-bearing substitution. You see, animal sacrifices couldn't cry out, but we're not redeemed by the blood of goats and bulls. We're redeemed by the precious blood of the God-man who's standing before God in our place, bearing the judgment and condemnation that was rightly ours. And He's not crying out, rescue me, deliver me. He's crying out as the Holy One of God, who for the first time in His life cannot call God His Father. That's the heart of the Christian good news. In His wisdom and grace, God provided a way to justify the ungodly at a cost we will never fathom. Through the ages of eternity, we will be no further forward fathoming the wonder of it than we would be at the beginning. that by a substitution God Himself became the Lamb of sacrifice. But then thirdly, it's a cry of bruised but unbowed faith. Notice the personal pronoun, my God, my God. The darkness has enshrouded him. The sense of the fatherhood of God has left him, but the personal pronoun never left him. 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 that takes us to the very heart, doesn't it, of how we appropriate the substitutionary saving merits of Jesus Christ. My God, my God, His faith is bruised, but it's unbowed. It's there. He's trusting. He's saying in His bewilderment, Lord, Father, God, Your ways are past finding out. But I'm here not by the machinations of mere men. I'm here by the divine will and purpose. And in my perplexity, I want you to know that you're my God. It's almost a bit like Jacob saying, I won't let you go until you bless. You're mine. Your ways are past finding out. I can't fathom that all that you're doing must be good because you're good. It's a cry of bruised but unbowed faith. And again, I think for some of us, that's a word in season, isn't it? Maybe here this morning, your faith is deeply bruised. Maybe you've been let down or life has unfolded for you in ways you could never have imagined and you hardly know how to put one foot in front of another. I sometimes think we underestimate the wonder that going through a day we're still found in Jesus Christ, when all hell has been raged against us. when Satan and his legions of armies have sought to distract, deflect, destroy us. I think we should be thankful beyond words that as we lay our heads down in our pillows, we can say, Lord, blessed be your name. I've not abandoned you. You've kept me through another day. It's a great thing to be kept through a day. Maybe your faith is bruised even battered, so was your Savior's. But you still have my God. Maybe like Him, you find the gracious fatherhood of God distant from you. There are times like that. Maybe you're different from me, but the personal pronoun never leaves, never leaves. And fourthly, it's a cry of a man upheld by the Holy Spirit. Why do I say that? Well, because in Hebrews 9, verse 14, I think we are told that it was by the eternal Spirit that he offered himself unblemished to God. How did our Lord Jesus Christ go through his earthly life and finish the work given to him by his Father by the help of the Holy Spirit. He couldn't, listen to this, he couldn't have done it without the Holy Spirit. You say, that's a bold statement. No, it's a Bible statement. What's the first thing we're told in the prophecy of Isaiah about the Messiah? Chapter 11, I will put my spirit upon him. What's the first thing we're told in the first servant song in Isaiah 42? Behold, my servant, whom I have chosen, I will put my spirit upon him. It's as a pneumatic man, as a spirit-filled, spirit-enabled man, given the spirit without measure, John 3, 30 whatever, 34 or something. It's as the man of the Spirit that he lives out his life and is enabled to cry out in faith, bruised and battered, and yet in faith by the sustaining, enabling power of the Holy Spirit. You see, what's going on here is the Holy Trinity working together in concert for the salvation of the world. the Father giving up His Son, the Son offering up Himself, and the Spirit enabling the Son so to do. Upheld by the Holy Spirit. God has given us His Holy Spirit. He's called the helper. I love that word in Romans 8. It's a 17-letter double compound in Greek. Just help. The Spirit helps us take 17 double compound letters in Greek. It means someone who stands over against us because we need someone different from us, don't we? But then it also means someone who's come right alongside us. He said, well, how can you be over against us and come alongside us? We're supernaturalists. And the Spirit helps us. And when we reach the end of our tether, the Holy Spirit is there to say, go on. We'll do it together. and the Lord Jesus Christ goes to Calvary's cross, sustained and upheld by the Holy Spirit. I said there was silence from heaven, and there is silence. Let's know this is my beloved Son. But I've often wondered what was going on in heaven. As all heaven with bated bewilderment beheld God the Son in our flesh on the road to Calvary, earth hears nothing. But I've long wondered, this isn't my thought, but I've long wondered this, that the father as he beholds his son crying out to him was not actually saying, if ever I loved you, My Jesus, it is now." And finally, number five, it's a cry of covenant love and obedience. It's a cry of sinless perplexity, a cry of believing, sin-bearing substitution. It's a cry of bruised but unbowed faith. It's a cry of a man upheld by the Holy Spirit. And fifthly, it's a cry of covenant love and obedience. Because essentially, that's what's happening here. We talk too much about covenant. And we forget that Jesus Christ Himself is the covenant. I will give to you a covenant, God says. We have this propensity to isolate theology from the person of Jesus Christ, isolating the benefits of Christ from the person of Christ. I will give my servant to you as a covenant." Jesus Christ is the covenant. And in His cry of dereliction, He's expressing covenant love to the Father who sent Him and to the people for whom He came. It's a cry that says, I've endured the cross, despising its shame, not for my own sake, but for your sake. I'm the covenant, I'm the pledge of love that the Father has given to the world. That's why we don't say to people, Here are 10 cardinal doctrines. Do you believe them? If so, become a member of the church. I was hearing this morning, just in the room before the elders prayed, just Peter was sharing with us in recent times, someone who gave testimony to their faith. And what so struck me was what Peter said, if I remember rightly. It was all about Jesus. Now, you know that I'm an unreconstructed Westminster Calvinist. I believe in doctrine to the core of my being. But it wasn't doctrine that was crucified for me. It wasn't the Bible that was crucified for me. It was God the Son in my flesh who was crucified for me." So, he took the road to Calvary, despising its shame. And Lord willing, tonight we will see that God highly exalted him, gave him the name above every other name. And from that place of regnancy, he sends out his church to be his witness bearers in the world. Amen.