Resurrection Week: THURSDAY
David Abdo (11th Grade, Homeschool)
Matthew 27:46 says, “About the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
I never fully understood what this verse meant. God loved Jesus and He was His only Son. God sent his Son to die for us, but why would He abandon Him at His hardest hour? Surely He wouldn’t abandon His only Son then. But Jesus was 100% God and 100% Man and God is perfect and without sin. When He died, He took on the sins of the world and died for sinners, taking all man’s sin with Him to the grave and He couldn’t have taken all those sins being a perfect God. He laid down His crown so He could save us. But that’s not the end of the story. When God raised Him from the dead all His power and glory was restored and He had defeated sin. When Jesus was in the garden before His death He was in anguish. He knew what was going to follow. He was in such anguish He was sweating blood.
Sometimes we like to say no one knows what I’m going through or no one can possibly understand. But Jesus does. He went through more than most of us will ever go through. Everyone has at least one point when they have felt forsaken. It could be divorced parents, a dad that left, betrayed by a best friend, cheated on, or even just feeling like no one cares; that’s how Jesus felt on the cross. It was in that moment that the spirit of God left Him so that He could take on all the sins of the world. We can’t say that I’m the only one because no matter how lost or lonely, or if you think that no one could possibly understand, there is always one that we can go to who knows exactly what we’re going through. 1 Peter 5:10 says, “And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.” And 1 Corinthians 10:13 says, “No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it.”