It's always a blessing to be able to gather with you for worship and bring the ministry of God's word. So I'm thankful again for an opportunity to be here with you today. And I do bring you greetings from your brothers and sisters in Christ in Essex, Ontario. Please take your Bibles again and turn back to Mark chapter 15. Mark's Gospel, chapter 15, I want to continue reading in the text where Pastor Bernard left off. Mark chapter 15, and we pick up at verse 21. And they compelled a passerby, Simon of Cyrene, who is coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus to carry his cross. And they brought him to the place called Golgotha, which means place of a skull. And they offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it. And they crucified him and divided his garments among them, casting lots for them to decide what each should take. And it was the third hour when they crucified him. And the inscription of the charge against him read, the King of the Jews. And with him they crucified two robbers, one on his right and one on his left. And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, aha, you who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself and come down from the cross. So also the chief priests with the scribes mocked him to one another saying, he saved others, he cannot save himself. Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may see and believe. Those who were crucified with him also reviled him. And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice, Eloi, Eloi, lemma sabachthani, which means, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And some of the bystanders hearing it said, behold, he is calling Elijah. And someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink saying, Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down. And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. And when the centurion who stood facing him saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, truly this man was the Son of God. Let's again bow in prayer. Our Father, we thank you for your word and for this very precious testimony about the death of our Lord Jesus Christ. Father, most of us here this morning will be very familiar with these things that we have read, but we ask that you would bring it to us today with freshness. And so we pray especially for the ministry of the Holy Spirit that He would come and use the word that He brought to us, that we might see our Lord Jesus, and that we might wonder again that our Savior took our place, bore our sins, our shame, and our guilt, that we might know peace with God. Father, we pray for anyone here today who does not know our Lord Jesus, We ask our Father that even this reminder of the death of Christ might be blessed by your Spirit to bring them to know our Savior today, whom to know is life eternal. We ask these things in Jesus' precious name. Amen. Mark reminds us that Jesus was brought to the place of execution and nailed to the cross at nine o'clock in the morning. The first three hours were marked by something of a party mood around the cross. The religious leaders were overjoyed that they had finally triumphed over their enemy. They threw his words back into his face, mocking his apparent inability to do anything to save himself. We know that Jerusalem was swollen with visitors for the Passover feast. Calvary must have been close to one of the main entry points into the city. The people who were passing by knew it was Jesus and they joined in the derision. Even the robbers crucified with him keep their insults on him. It was a pile on of great evil. but then the strangest occurrence. Noon came, the brightest moment of the day, and darkness enveloped the land. The party atmosphere turned to an eerie silence. Who could doubt that God was speaking through the supernatural intrusion into human schedule? The voices of the mockers fell silent. Probably all that could be heard were the moans of the sufferers. After three hours, which must have seemed like an eternity, a loud shout from Jesus pierced the darkness. Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani. It was obviously misunderstood, even by those standing by. And so Mark gives us the translation. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? If Jesus was looking for a response, if the people standing there were waiting for a voice from heaven, the silence was deafening. the abandonment that Jesus complained of in prayer, the fact that he had been left all alone, that reality lingered in the darkness until he cried again and took his final breath. Now this morning, I want us to consider for a little while this unanswered question of the Lord Jesus. Some have called it a cry from hell. We won't begin to plumb the depths of it this morning, but I want us to have some thoughts to ponder as we approach the Lord's table. First of all, I want you to consider with me the incompatible reality that lay behind this question. The incompatible reality that lay behind this question. Now, I don't think that's a term that we use every day, incompatible reality, but it means simply when two things cannot coexist. We might think of it in a very simple illustration. You go into the kitchen, mom's baking or cooking something, and she says, I want you to taste this. And you take a bite and you say, oh, that's sour. And then she says, well, we'll take another bite. And you say, oh, that's sweet. Well, which is it? It can't be both. That's an incompatible reality. That's what we have in Jesus' question, an incompatible reality. What are the two things that are incompatible? Well, first of all, Just listening to the question, Jesus has been forsaken by God. He's been abandoned and left all alone. The darkness has pointed to God, God hiding his face from Jesus, hanging on the cross. That's the reality that Jesus expresses in his question. But then we have this completely opposite truth. that Jesus is the beloved son of the Father, the darling of heaven, the one who always pleased his Father. This is a truth which the Bible reveals to us from cover to cover. You cannot find a beginning to the story of the love of God for his Son because it is a relationship that existed from all eternity. We could look at various passages in the Word of God. For instance, in Proverbs 8, we have a little insight into the relationship between the father and son at the time of the world's creation. Listen to the son as he speaks of his father. When he established the heavens, I was there. When he drew a circle on the face of the deep, when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, when he assigned to the sea its limit so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth, Then I was beside him, like a master workman, and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the children of man." What a picture that gives to us of the Father and Son at creation. like a father and son we might think of in the dad's workshop. And they're working together in a project, and they're enjoying fellowship with one another, and they're rejoicing and enjoying this project that they're completing together. That's the father and son at creation, rejoicing in one another, in their character as God, and rejoicing in the work of their hands that they're making in this world. When the father prophesied in the Old Testament through Isaiah about the coming of his son into the world, he said this in Isaiah 42. Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights. I have put my spirit upon him. He will bring forth justice to the nations. Here's the father expressing even before the Lord Jesus fulfilled this plan, his delight in his son. When that eternal plan finally came to pass, as we've been considering over the past few days, the father sent the angels of heaven to celebrate his birth. At Jesus' baptism and His transfiguration, He declared audibly from heaven, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. Every testimony imaginable bears witness to the infinite love and delight which God the Father has in His Son. How then could He abandon Him? in his time of greatest need. When Jesus was suffering unbearable agonies, being abused by wicked men, why would his father abandon him? What would we think of a human father who wouldn't come to the help of his son in his time of desperate need? This question presents to us an incompatible reality. How can both things be true? That brings us secondly to another strange reality. Jesus knew the answer to the question he was making. Jesus knew the answer to the question he was making. When the words of Jesus pierced that afternoon darkness with such a terrible question, we can reflect through our understanding of the Bible that our Savior knew the exact answer to that question. He had been part of that pre-creation council in which God the Father and God the Son had agreed together that the Son would come into this world to be the Savior. that He would take upon Himself true humanity, a body and soul, in order to suffer and die. God the Son knew that ahead of time. He was the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. The plan was established, and even when it was established, it was as good as done. Throughout the ministry of Jesus, He kept announcing that he had come to save sinners. Mark 10.45, for even the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. He knew that his path was through suffering and death. both at the beginning and end of his ministry, he declared that he was going to be lifted up, indicating the kind of death he was going to die. He kept telling his disciples that he was going to be handed over to wicked men to be put to death. Perhaps the greatest testimony that Jesus knew exactly what was going to happen to him was his experience in the Garden of Gethsemane just the night before. With the whole reality of his suffering and death staring him in the face, Jesus pled with his father to remove the cup from him. This coming ordeal was pictured as the father placing a cup to drink into Jesus' hands. The cup was filled with the sins of all of his people and the accompanying wrath of God, the penalty that all those sins deserved. It spoke vividly of the truth. that Jesus was going to the cross as a substitute for sinners. He would bear their sin, their guilt and shame, and he would become the object of God's holy anger and justice against sinners. So when Jesus cried out with this question, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? He was showing that what had been anticipated was actually happening. Jesus was experiencing hell, which at its basic meaning is separation from God. He did that in order to save his people. He knew the answer to his own question. It makes us ask, well, why would he ask this question then if he knew the answer? Our text doesn't really give us a resolution, but I think the Garden of Gethsemane may hold a clue. Back in that hallowed spot, Jesus asked the Father to remove what he had already agreed to. He prayed for something that was going against the predetermined counsel of God. He knew that he had committed himself already. He knew that he would follow through with the plan as expressed in his simple response, not my will, but your will be done. Yet clearly, the struggle was very real. The sight of a cup full of countless sins and overflowing with the wrath of God was revolting to his holy being. He drew back from it in terror, even though he knew he was committed to it. I think the same thing is being expressed in this question from the cross. He had agreed to be our sin bearer. He had determined to be the offering for sin, satisfying the wrath of God, paying our debt. But when it all enveloped him, it was so overwhelming, so grievous that his soul cried out, why, why? It seems to have been more an expression of agony than a search for information. To be abandoned by God is the worst experience anyone could ever go through, all the more when you are the beloved of the Father. So Jesus knew the answer, even when he cried out from the cross. And then thirdly and finally this morning, a surprising discovery. This question had already been asked. A surprising discovery. This question had already been asked. Now many Christians will know that Jesus' question is an exact repetition of the opening words of Psalm 22. It's a Psalm of David, written during a time of great trial, crying out to God for help. And he feels as he cries out to the Lord that God isn't answering him, that he has been abandoned. Jesus' use of this psalm helps us to understand that it is a messianic psalm, a psalm intended by God to be a portrait in words of the experience of the coming Savior. It's a good reminder, even in the Old Testament, God had made it plain that His Savior, His servant, would be a suffering servant. He was going to be led like a lamb to the slaughter. He was going to have our sins laid upon Him. And God was going to bruise Him. God was going to make Him suffer as He took our place. Psalm 22 is one of many Old Testament references to this solemn and saving truth. As we look upon our Lord Jesus in Mark 15, hanging in agony upon the cross, his body experiencing the awful pains of crucifixion, his holy soul suffering the outpoured wrath of God, we understand that as the hours of darkness proceeded, There was this stirring in his soul, this gathering storm, we might say, this piling up of emotions that eventually boiled over like a violent volcano. What did our Savior do in that moment? He reached for God's book. Now, not literally, but in his mind and in his soul, he took the words of Psalm 22 and he spoke them to his father. These are words of faith. My God, my God. He was not turning away from God. He was trusting in God. This appears to be the man Jesus acknowledging his relationship with God despite the awful suffering. These are words of hope. Because as you follow Psalm 22 to its close, it turns from a description of terrible suffering to glorious victory. The nations of the earth are going to be one for the Messiah. The purpose of the suffering is seen at last. A multitude that no man can number, forgiven for their sins, rescued from the condemnation of sin and hell, and brought into the blessed fellowship of God for all eternity. All because Jesus was willing to be abandoned by his Father. through the experience of the cross? This was a question that had been asked before. Now as we examine Jesus' question and ponder some of the realities that it brings to our hearts and our minds, I want to ask you a question. these things that we've been considering this morning about Jesus' experience on the cross and why he had to go through this suffering and death. Have you embraced that? Have you embraced that for yourself? Have you embraced this seeming paradox that Jesus, the beloved Son of the Father, could be abandoned by His Father in His hour of great need. That is something that your mind will never fully be able to answer. But you need to embrace this, because that helps us to peer into this glorious mystery of the death of Jesus in our place. Have you embraced that for yourself? Not just simply as a truth that you've heard over and over and over again, and perhaps you could repeat it back to me, you know it so well. But as I ask you, have you embraced this for yourself I'm really asking you, have you come to Jesus and asked Him to save you on the basis of what He did on the cross? Have you embraced Him as your Savior, the only one who can save you from Abandonment by God. The only one who can save you from hell. The only one who can forgive your sins and wash you clean and make you acceptable to God. The only one who can give you the gift of eternal life. Have you embraced the Lord Jesus in these wonderful mysteries of the cross? Have you embraced the reason that Jesus knew? Do you believe that Jesus came to die for sinners? And have you looked to Him to rescue you from all your sins? This cry of our Lord Jesus ought to be a great encouragement to Christians, even as we go through times of trial. You all know that sense of being alone and where is God? I've prayed, I've asked his help, he doesn't seem to be answering, he doesn't seem to be close, I feel all by myself. The Lord Jesus can help you to understand that experience because he went through it ultimately. so that we as his people might never experience the abandonment of God. And you can go to him and say, Savior, you prayed these words of Psalm 22. That's how I feel right now. Would you come and minister to me and help me to know that this is a time that calls for faith and for hope and for trust in God? Brethren, we haven't started to get to the bottom of this question, but I urge you to ponder it today. And as we come to the table, hear it echoing from Jesus' voice in the Gospels into your ears. And if you are privileged to be able to take that bread and eat it, and to take the cup and drink it. Thank the Lord Jesus that he went through this, that he made such a cry, such a question, so that you could know this wonderful salvation. Let's bow together in prayer. Heavenly Father, we are amazed that our Lord Jesus was willing to do all that we have read here, all that we've been thinking about for us, that he would come and take our place, that he would be our substitute, our sin bearer, that we might be forgiven and accepted and know your love towards us as dearly loved children. Help us to rejoice in that this morning as we come to the table. Help us to honor the Lord Jesus and glorify him from the depths of our heart with faith and love and thanksgiving. We pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.