Forsaken
Forsaken. When the last meal was finished and when Jesus' talk and prayer with his disciples were ended, he and his friends left the upper room. They were bound for the Garden of Gethsemane. They would leave by the gate, go down the steep valley and cross the brook Kedron. // All the Passover lambs were killed in the Temple, and the blood of the lambs was poured on the altar as an offering to God. Lambs were slain for over 2.5 million pilgrims for the Passover. From the altar there was a channel down to the brook Kedron, and through that channel the blood of the Passover lambs drained away. When Jesus crossed the brook Kedron it would still be red with the blood of the lambs which had been sacrificed; and as he did so, the thought of his own sacrifice would be vivid in his mind.
Having crossed the channel of the Kedron, they came to the Mount of Olives.
Often Jesus and his disciples had gone there for peace and quiet. Judas knew that he would find Jesus there and it was there that he had engineered the arrest to take place. // There is something astonishing about the force which came out to arrest Jesus. John said that there was a company of soldiers, together with officers from the chief priests and Pharisees. The officers would be the Temple police. The Temple authorities had a kind of private police force to keep good order. There was a band of Roman soldiers also. What an expedition to send out against an unarmed Galilaean carpenter! what a compliment to the power of Jesus! // When the authorities decided to arrest him, they sent an army to do it. And Jesus was forsaken by His disciples. Then the temple police took him to Annas.
Jesus had attacked Annas' vested interest; he had cleared the Temple and had hit Annas where it hurt--in his pocket. Annas wanted to be the first to gloat over the capture of this disturbing Galilaean. / The examination before Annas was a mockery of justice. It was an essential regulation of the Jewish law that a prisoner must be asked no question which would incriminate him. "Our true law does not inflict the penalty of death upon a sinner by his own confession." Annas violated the principles of Jewish justice when he questioned Jesus. It was precisely of this that Jesus reminded him. Jesus said: "Don't ask me questions. Ask those who heard me." He was, in effect, saying: "Make your evidence about me in the proper and legal way. Examine your witnesses, which you have every right to do; stop examining me, which you have no right to do." When Jesus said that, one of the officers hit him a slap across the face. He said, in effect, "Are you trying to teach the High Priest how to conduct a trial?" Jesus' answer was: "If I have said or taught anything illegal, witnesses should be called. I have only stated the law. Why hit me for that?"
Jesus had been forsaken even by justice. The self-interest of Annas and his colleagues had been touched; and Jesus was condemned before he was tried.
"At the time of the Feast, it was the custom for the governor to release to the people a prisoner, whom they chose. There was a man called Barabbas, confined with the revolutionaries, who had committed murder during the insurrection. The crowd approached Pilate's judgment seat and began to request that he should carry out the customary procedure for them. Pilate answered, 'Do you wish me to release to you the King of the Jews?' For he knew that the chief priests had handed him over to him through sheer malice. The chief priests stirred up the mob to demand the release of Barabbas all the more. Pilate again asked them, 'What shall I do to the man you call the King of the Jews?' Again they shrieked, 'Crucify him!' Pilate said to them, 'What harm has he done?' They shrieked the more vehemently, 'Crucify him!' Pilate wished to please the mob, and he released Barabbas for them, and, when he had scourged Jesus, he handed him over to them to be crucified." Jesus was forsaken by the protection of the conquering power.
People have always felt it a mystery that less than a week after the crowd were shouting a welcome when Jesus rode into Jerusalem, they were now shrieking for his crucifixion. There is no real mystery. The reason is quite simply that this was a different crowd. Think of the arrest. It was deliberately secret. True, the disciples fled and must have spread the news, but they could not have known that the Sanhedrin was going to violate its own laws and carry out a travesty of a trial by night. There can have been very few of Jesus' supporters in that crowd.
When they reached the place of crucifixion, the cross was laid flat on the ground. The prisoner was stretched upon it and his hands nailed to it.
As He hung from the cross the Jewish leaders flung one last challenge at Jesus. "Come down from the Cross," they said, "and we will believe in you." // Jesus went the whole way and died on the Cross and this means that there is literally no limit to God's love. ///Here comes the last scene of all, a scene so terrible that the sky was unnaturally darkened and it seemed that even nature could not bear to look upon Jesus being forsaken anymore.
In his final moments, he cries out in a voice that must surely tear at the hearts of the watchers on the hill. “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” These words mean that the sinless Jesus entered complete into the desolation of sin. during His life he got toknow sinners very well. He experienced their weakness, sickness, treachery. Now, at the end, his suffering took him to the place where all sin leads - to the sense that one is all aline in a brutal, meaningless universe, abandoned even by God. The words are cried for all humankind. He is here, on this cross, suffering in our stead. In this one cosmic moment, he experiences—for us, instead of us—the profound hopelessness of life without God. His separation from the Father is complete and absolute. It is, in a word, hell.
Think on this, my friends. Jesus descended into hell for us. Only he could have come back from that./////////////////
That is why he can understand our situation so well. That is why we need never fear to go to him when sin cuts us off from God. Because he has gone through it, he can help others who are going through it. There is no depth of human experience which Christ has not plumbed. Jesus was forsaken.
but the curtain was torn and the way to God was wide open to every man.
Within the Holy of Holies dwelt the very essence of God. Now with the death of Jesus the curtain which hid God was torn and men could see him face to face. No longer was God hidden. No longer need men guess and grope.
Jesus had no one. He felt forsaken by God at the moment of death.
Because Jesus accepted being forsaken we have Jesus to accompany us in dark times.