INTRO: So, WE are Left to Endure Longer Than We Thought.   Our Trials of Endurance While Constantly Actively Trusting God …Seem to Go On and On. Sometimes Beyond Our Understanding.  Yet, God Does Not Leave Us. Even While Our God-Gifted Mind, Heart, Life, and Purpose are Not in the State WE Feel to Be At Peace and Safety.

            We Want Well-Being, Peace, Order, Predictability, Assurance of God’s Protection, Guidance, and Loving Relationship.

            We Don’t Want Unpredictable and Unseen Circumstances, Health, Living Conditions, or Shallow Relationships.   We Want Life to BE All In Order   …   BUT

            Since Our Life is Given To Learn God-LIFE, and to Give It FOR God’s Plan … Our God-Gifted Life, Mind, Heart, and Purpose are BEING Overseen, Guided and Moved Toward God’s Eternal Kingdom and HIS Righteousness … All By and FOR God and His Family …It is Our Called and Chosen of God DUTY to Learn HOW to Endure What We Do Not Yet Understand, and Do It With God!

BENEFIT STATEMENT: We Certainly Do Not Want to Change, Have Unpredictability, Be Upset, Move FROM Here, or Not to Be Informed Completely of What and Why God May Leave Us in A State of Non-Peace.  BUT:

SPS: God Knows His Plan, His God-Life, and It is All For Us WITH Him Eternally.  So …  NOW,

Let US Rise and GO From Here!

BODY: Jn 14.31; Deut 9.12 – “Arise and GO From Here” – (Leave this Condition, and Go To Work With God at What You Do Not Yet Fully Understand)

1. In His Cross, Jesus Christ was Teaching His People THEN and Future HOW to Endure What We Do Not Yet Understand … While Doing It WITH and FOR Our Father WITH Christ.

We Fist need to Grasp the Setting around the Cross of Christ in order to Pick up Ours and Follow Him. We’ll begin the story now in the Bible, beginning in

Matthew 27:45-46—

45  Now from the sixth hour until the ninth hour there was darkness over all the landThe hours were counted from sunrise, so the sixth hour was noon and the ninth hour 3 o’clock. So from noon until 3 there was this puzzling and mysterious darkness over the land—a darkness no doubt sent from God to signify the darkness of what was taking place with the brutalization and death of His Son.  The Jewish historian Josephus explicitly states that the lambs were slain at Temple beginning at the 9th hour, or 3 o’clock.
46  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?”

Matthew records His words in Hebrew and Aramaic—“El,” of course, as in “Eli” here, being one of the names or titles of God—and then translates them into Greek, from which they are translated into English for us: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”

Why would Jesus say this? Let’s consider a few other events and verses leading up to this.

First of all, did Jesus know what was going to happen to Him? Yes, He clearly did. Let’s notice several verses. Let’s first notice a messianic prophecy in

Isaiah 53:3-5—
3  He is despised and rejected by men, a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.

4  Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.

5  But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.

Jesus knew this prophecy—He Himself had inspired it to be written by Isaiah some 800 years earlier. It foretold that He would be despised and rejected, that He would bear our griefs, that He would be wounded, bruised, chastised and scourged. He knew He would have to bear all of this because of our transgressions and sins …as our Creator, Sustainer, Life-Giver, Judge, Our Responsible Superior

Let’s notice some other verses from the Gospels leading up to this time. Let’s look at

Mark 10:32-34—
32  Now they were on the road, going up to Jerusalem . . . Then He took the twelve aside again and began to tell them the things that would happen to Him:

33  “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be betrayed to the chief priests and to the scribes; and they will condemn Him to death and deliver Him to the Gentiles;

34  “and they will mock Him, and scourge Him, and spit on Him, and kill Him. And the third day He will rise again.”

This is very specific. Jesus had previously told His 12 disciples that in Jerusalem He would be betrayed, that the chief priests and scribes would condemn Him to death and give Him over to the Romans, and He would be mocked, scourged, spat upon and killed before He would be resurrected three days later. This is very specific.

Not long after this, He told them again what would happen. Notice

Matthew 26:1-2—

1  Now it came to pass, when Jesus had finished all these sayings [“all those sayings” being the Olivet Prophecy], that He said to His disciples,

2  “You know that after two days is the Passover, and the Son of Man will be delivered up to be crucified.”

So here, just two days before these events, He specifically tells the disciples that He will die by crucifixion. He also knows, since He is the fulfillment of the symbolism of the Passover lambs, that He will die on the day of Passover.

And yet through this, knowing exactly what would happen to Him, knowing He could’ve escaped what was coming at any time, He chose to go through it anyway. So exactly what is going on here when Jesus says, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?”

The answer is somewhat surprising, but actually maybe not that surprising at all considering what we’ve been seeing as we’re going through our studies in the Gospels. As I’ve explained before, when we see something said or done in the Gospels that doesn’t make a lot of sense, it may be because we are seeing a remez where the writers don’t give us the whole story. And that’s the case here.

So if Jesus is giving a remez when He says says, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?”—what is this a remez to,  and where is He quoting from?  If we don’t know, we miss a huge part of the story of what Jesus is going through and its meaning for us today.

When Jesus says this, He is quoting word-for-word from the first verse of Psalm 22—“My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?”

This is a Psalm of the Messiah. Specifically, it’s a prophetic Psalm of what the Messiah would go through in His suffering and death on behalf of all mankind. Incidentally, this is the only place in the Gospels where Jesus addresses the Father as “My God,” much less repeating it and using it twice. This is further proof that He’s quoting here from Psalm 22 and not just saying this off the top of His head.

CONCLUSION: What is There For God’s People to Learn and Live From Christ’s Teaching on His Cross? How to Endure the Greatest Training Trials WHILE Trusting God Even Though Not Completely Understanding It All …AND Overcome WITH God For His Kingdom Righteousness.

CLOSE: SO … Let US Arise From This Familiar Life With Humanity … AND  G O  From Here!

John 14:29-31 (NKJV) 29  And now I have told you before it comes, that when it does come to pass, you may ((((believe. 30  I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming, and he has nothing in Me. ((((31  But that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father gave Me commandment, so I do. ((((Arise, let us go from here.