"My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?"

Last week we examined the first of Jesus' last words from the cross: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."  This week I feel compelled to focus on the cry of Jesus' heart when blackness covered the earth. 

Matthew 27:46 tells us that about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?" which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken Me?"  Here Jesus was expressing His feelings of abandonment as God placed the sins of the world on Him--and because of that, God had to "turn away" from Jesus.  As Jesus was feeling that weight of sin, He was experiencing a separation from God for the only time in all of eternity.  This was a fulfillment of the prophetic statement in Psalm 22:1.

What is the implication for us?  Sin also separates believers from God.  Nothing--no sin--can take away our salvation.  Praise God!  But sin interrupts our sweet fellowship with our Heavenly Father because our perfect, holy God cannot look on sin.  This is so important in our prayer life because prayer is the link that connects us to God.

Seeing God turn His face away from His beloved son makes us realize how seriously God takes sin.  How seriously do we take it?  How casually we sin, and how easily we dismiss it!  (That unkind word to a co-worker, the short answer to our spouse, gossip--the list goes on.)  Many times when we come before God in prayer, instead of mourning over our sin and repenting of it, we pray the all inclusive, "Lord, if I have committed any sin, please forgive me."  How can God forgive when we are unwilling to admit to ourselves and to Him what we have done?

We cannot presume upon God's blessings or expect Him to answer our prayers when unconfessed sin has broken our relationship with Him.  I believe this is the reason we do not experience more of God's power in our church and in our individual lives.  So often we wonder why God seems silent when we pray, why we don't see His power fall in our church, why things just don't seem to come together in our workplace or in our home.  Could it be that God has had to turn His face away because He cannot look at unconfessed sin?