Word of Salvation – Vol.29 No.09 – March 1984
A Cry From Outer Darkness
Sermon by Rev. A. I. deGraaf v.d.m. on Matthew 27:46
Scripture: Psalm 22; Matthew 27:33-49
Suggested Hymns: Ps.H.178; 180; 351; 353; 355;
or BoW 301; 302:1 and 302:4,6.
There is an old Dutch saying:
“When you are in trouble, you will learn to pray.”
I don’t know about that. I have seen Christians who could talk about God and TO God when all things went fine, but who went all to pieces when real trouble came; especially when that pain and trouble lasted for a while, for weeks or months.
Then others could look at these stricken people and wonder: what has happened to their FAITH? I think you could ask an even more painful question: you could ask, as the devil loves doing, “Where now is your GOD?
The devil can come with that question when you’re hit and down; when one of your loved ones goes through a long illness. Sometimes it happens already when you suffer through other people, when your wife or husband lets you down, your children go astray. What then? How do you then react?
Do you slowly drift away from God? Or do you cry out in anguish and pain! God where are you?
In our text, too, we hear of a Man who had this terrible experience. How He did cry out…!
All kinds of people around there on that hill heard it! And they wondered aloud: “Where now is the God in whom He trusted before?”
But did they know what this Man was going through? The physical suffering on that cross already was too terrible for words. It sometimes took those poor victims three days to die. The nails driven through wrists and feet, carefully so that they would not be too much loss of blood. The problem was getting breath. You cannot breathe when hanging by your arms. For every breath you have to stretch your legs a bit pushing down on those terrible wounds.
The back against the rough pole of wood is open by the cruel flogging. Oh, the things people do to people..!
But then on top of it there was that darkness! No ordinary eclipse of the sun, this..! It couldn’t be. Around Passover time it was full moon there. The moon was up at night, not between earth and sun by day. An ordinary eclipse takes a few minutes of total darkness; and even that is not total.
This eerie darkness was three hours long. Only one Man knows what that darkness means and He knows that there is judgement in it and terror. In that darkness and in that pain and in that terrifying loneliness Jesus now needs His faith.
But where IS His faith now? Where NOW is His song? Maybe you and I when we would have been there on that hill, when hearing His cry would have been tempted to ask: Where NOW is the God of love of Whom Jesus talked when things went all right with Him?
Listen to His cry:
“My God, My God, why have You left Me alone?”
Nobody however realises there on Calvary, where that cry came from. It came from the outer darkness. It was more terrible than anyone on earth will ever know.
Even David, whose Psalm 22 starts with that cry, did not experience it as bitterly.
After all, thanks to Jesus, David could also say in the next Psalm:
“Even if I go through the valley of the very shadows of death,
You are with me. Your rod and your staff comfort me!”
But for Jesus it was different.
Let us listen to His cry from outer darkness:
1 – A cry from the centre of a riddle, WHY?
2 – A cry from the night of terror, FORSAKEN
3 – A cry that hangs on in prayer, TO GOD
and 4 – A cry, yet of faith and obedience MY GOD!
1 – A CRY FROM THE CENTRE OF A RIDDLE
That awful word: “WHY?” How many millions must have cried it, either from the middle of their own suffering and pain, or when helplessly watching when others they loved went through it.
Why, God, if You are love and if You are almighty, as they say, then WHY, God? WHY?
But when you and I begin to know ourselves a bit and dare to be honest enough to look at ourselves in the unflattering mirror of God’s law, what do you think, do we have to look long for a reason? Sure, I can compare myself to a known failure of a man or a notorious crook, and pat myself on the back: You’re OK, I’m OK..! Fool yourself that way if you like.
But when you replay before God’s holy ears the hateful, adulterous and materialistic thoughts that flitted through your brain any day of your life, what do you reckon the Holy One must think? What else can He do but forsake you and me, turn away in disgust and leave us to it? Leave us to your own devises and those of the devil? Even Job, of whom the Bible says that he was “blameless and upright, fearing God and shunning evil”, when hit by those sudden disasters of losing all his possessions and all his kids in one day, and his health a bit later, and when wondering and asking WHY (even though he asked GOD Himself, as Jesus did!), even Job had to say: Lord, I am sorry;
I lay my hand on my mouth;
I should not have asked that way.
It is all right to ask why, but not by way of excusing ourselves as if God were unfair.
But now Jesus asks it.
WHY, God? WHY? He never had done anything but the full and holy will of God.
He had never done any sin. His had been a life so unlike yours and mine. A life of total surrender, total obedience. Indeed, HE had reason, as the only One in all the world in all of history, to ask: WHY?
He was the only one with the right to be puzzled.
You know, brothers and sisters, there are people today who have trouble with the teaching of the Bible that JESUS SUFFERED THE ANGER OF GOD IN OUR PLACE, what we call the doctrine of the ATONEMENT.
That Jesus was the Lamb slaughtered for sinners, that He was the goat sent out into the desert carrying – all alone – God’s retribution for our sin. What Isaiah says:
We all strayed as sheep and pigheadedly went each one on his own so-called merry way; but “God laid all our iniquities on Him”.
There are people today who like to get back to the idea that we ourselves have to arrange our credit with God; by just being human to other people: feeding the hungry and giving to the poor.
If that were true that we could do that, then the cry of Jesus is forever unanswered; WHY?
Then what happened there at the cross would be the bitterest unfairness, the greatest injustice in all the universe.
It would then be a question of RIGHTFUL ACCUSATION: An indictment God would never – NEVER! – get away with.
If the good are rewarded and the bad punished – all according to what they themselves deserve and can deserve.
Then there is no divine answer to this question: “WHY?” from the Holy One and just. Then that bitter cry is a riddle that forever will remain a riddle.
Something that never should have happened.
Then what happened there on Calvary is tragedy, bitter tragedy, but not redemption.
But you see, it is different. That cry is not just a cry from the riddle we all know and all have trouble with at times (why must the good ones suffer).
It is even worse…
2 – IT IS A CRY FROM THE DEPTH OF TERROR
When walking our earth Jesus taught people about hell, that unpopular, and indeed very difficult subject. He said terrible things about it, called it a fire that never stops burning and OUTER DARKNESS.
Anyone who ever has had nightmares knows about that a little bit. The ultimate unspeakable horror waiting for you while you are pinned down and cannot run away.
Not a light is found there; not even a little star in the sky. Outer darkness…! God is not there. He has turned His back on him. And then there is the devil; he is always there where God isn’t. The Fathers would say of that terror Jesus went into: “He descended into hell…!”
God who has turned His back on him. He does NOT answer. Utter silence. Utter horror. Jesus has been through that: in our place. This was what we deserved, and still would deserve. This grief of ours HE bore; and He bore it to the end. All of it..!
Keep looking now, little one. Keep listening! There are people who suffer terribly in our world. Even children of God may have to suffer terribly, but never is it as terrible as His suffering. Never is it the very anguish of hell. And yet there are people who suffer, even though not nearly as bad, who think of stopping with prayer. God doesn’t hear me any longer, they think. God has forgotten me, they wonder.
But look at Jesus now. For it is at the end of those terrible hours the Bible says He cried. He KEPT on praying.
When there was no sign God would ever listen, He kept crying: GOD! GOD! Not about God,.. but to God. No feeling of joy, no feeling of nearness. If you or I would even feel, or rather UN-feel, like Jesus there, we would stay away from church and say: NO USE..!
We would let our prayer slip away and say: NO ANSWER..!
But the Son kept praying. Even from hell the cry went up: “GOD!”
That gets us to point three already:
3 – A CRY – THAT HANGS ON IN PRAYER.
In that cry the Son says to us: never mind how you feel little one: KEEP PRAYING, even if it is crying, “WHY?” to God!
But there is more.
HE KEPT ON PRAYING THEN; but what do you think HE IS DOING NOW, today. He was our Sin-bearer then, He is our High-Priest now!
Oh, the wonder of it! He, who is at the right hand of God, is also praying for His people! There may be moments in your life and mine when through the smallness of our faith, or the bitterness of our sorrow, we forget to pray; or we have no longer the heart to pray. I am not saying that is good.
But thank God I may tell you: Even if you don’t, HE does.
Even when in your heart it is all dessert, and you do not know any longer how to pray as you ought, because Jesus kept on praying even when in hell, there will be His Spirit right in your heart sighing to God in groanings that cannot be uttered. Because of the unspeakable suffering of Jesus in hell and His continuing obedient prayer to God there, the life-line with God’s children will never be broken:
Because of this cry of Jesus Paul could write Romans eight. And that gets us already into the last point.
Because the wonder is to become greater and deeper.
Not only did He pray from that outer darkness, not only did He keep on crying: “GOD! GOD!” No, even there from the depth of the punishment for our sin, even from the depth of hell itself, he kept saying what Psalm 91 says anyone may say who is in the shelter of the Almighty:
4 – He said: MY GOD!
God had left Him, but He cried: MY God! Nothing but darkness and terror, but He kept saying: MY God!
He kept that up for a whole eternity. An eternity pressed together into three unspeakable hours!
All concentration camps and all cancer sick beds and all gravesides of children and loved ones pressed together; and more, endlessly more bitterness and all that, into that eternal three hours.
But He the Obedient One went before us, and FOR us, through all that, saying: “MY God!”
Job’s wife, having lost all her children and seeing her husband stricken and ill suggested to her husband: Silly! Stupid! Still hanging on to God? Let Him go; say farewell to God; stop that religion and die! But He Who is more than Job kept crying: MY GOD!
Therefore there is for God’s children today that ever-open road. No, not the cancellation of all sickness, and no, not yet the lifting of all sorrows. Not yet the end to all suffering.
Paul would say in that same Romans eight, that there would be tribulation, and persecution, and sword.
He would say about us Christians that at times we would be a spectacle for all the world to look at, to sneer at. And angels of Satan still can come and hit, and hit.
And the world at times may wonder: where is now his faith? As they said about Peter in that night when he came as far as saying for everyone to hear: Jesus? No, I do not know that man. Never seen Him in my life. Honest!” But because of Jesus’ obedient prayer: “MY GOD, MY GOD!” things would get better with Peter; and you; and me.
Now it is possible no matter what happens for a sin-stricken and devil-battered child of God, about whom the world says: He’s had it! to say: I will arise and go to my God; yes even to my Father! And when people now look at you and at me and sometimes wonder rightly “what has happened to his faith, where is it?” then there is Jesus’ word, bought in the terror of outer darkness: his faith..? I have prayed for it, that yet it would not fail.
And so we stop looking at ourselves; and will not look so much at each other;
We just look at Him and humbly catch new courage. He knows. And He loves.
He has prayed for you, even in hell He did… that your faith would not fail.
Amen.