My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?

"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"  David asked this question in Psalm 22:1.  Jesus quoted the same words in Mark 15:34.  Many of uttered the same words, journeying through life and hitting a rough spot.  But looking at the rest of the story in Psalm 22, you'll notice that David is not blaming God.  He's crying out to God for help.  David knows God is the only one who can rescue him.  

Why do we feel forsaken?  Why are we hardwired to disdain the feeling?  We don't like it when we feel our close friends forsake us and we really hate it when we feel forsaken by God.     But would cause God to forsake his creation? 

The answer is sin.  God hates sin.  When we understand the magnitude of sin, we understand.  But we really don't understand it, do we?  

Sin is much like food poisoning.  Nobody likes food poisoning.  In fact, it's so bad we don't tend to return the food that caused us to get sick.  States pay for departments to monitor and check up on restaurants and grocery stores because we take food poisoning so seriously.  Food poisoning is bad.  

What food poisoning is to our stomach, sin is to our soul.  Yet we don't tend to take it seriously.  We don't even take it as seriously as food poisoning.  Eternity is at stake!  People would be up in arms if we argued that food is a personal matter and we should do away with the Health Department. . . but that's what we do when we argue that the church is not necessary.  

When we get our head around the reality of sin, Psalm 22 makes much more sense.  So does Jesus' words on the cross.  

Psalm 22 and forsakenness open our Easter service, "God Forsaken -- Sinners Redeemed."   I hope you'll join us.  You kind find more info about Easter and our series here. 

For the Kingdom!
Pastor Bryan Catherman