Great Commission Update - Apr 2025

Questions are crucial to a wise life, and as a naturally curious person, I love a good question. Extolling the power of questions and curiosity, Rudyard Kipling said that he kept “six honest serving men” named “what, why, when, how, where, and who,” with those ‘men’ being questions that taught him all he knew. A good question is the path to learning and the way to wisdom. The single most profound question ever asked was, “Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sabacthani?” The Greek texts of Mark 14 and Matthew 27, which both record this question of Jesus, say, “ἐβόησεν (cried out) ὁ Ἰησοῦς (Jesus) φωνῇ (phone/voice) μεγάλῃ (mega/loud),” which literally translated means, Jesus cried out with a loud voice, or, as the Greek puts it, a mega-phone! On the cross, as Jesus died in bottomless anguish, He megaphoned despair over His greatest agony, that of being abandoned by His Father.

My God, My God, WHY have You forsaken Me? Let’s be clear: This abandonment is real. Heaven was silent when Jesus cried out in Gethsemane for deliverance. There was no relief from the jeering of the guards or the crown of thorns. Soldiers beat Jesus with a whip and a stick, and no angelic hand stayed their fury. The nails pierced His flesh without relief. His lungs filled with the fluid of drowning, for that is how crucifixion kills - you drown in your own edema - and yet the Great Physician did not heal. Jesus hung on the cross, dejected, rejected, and jeered, and not one Heavenly helper came to save Him.

My God, My God, WHY have You forsaken Me? Jesus did not vocalize this question out of confusion or because He didn’t know the answer, as John tells us that, after pleading in the garden and understanding that He would not be delivered from the cross, Jesus, knew “all that would happen to Him” (John 18:4). Instead, at least two important things are demonstrated in this magnificent question. First, Jesus is expressing the agony of His suffering, both paying the price for our sins and enduring the pain of a Roman crucifixion. His question is an anguished cry of horror, reflecting that Jesus, fully God and fully man, is saturated with our sins and their consequences, ultimately becoming a curse instead of us. (2 Corinthians 5:21, “He made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” and Galatians 3:13, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.”)

My God, My God, WHY have You forsaken Me? Second, Jesus is quoting Scripture from Psalm 22. At His highest anxiety - bleeding on the cross and dying - what comes out? Scripture. When you stab Jesus, the Word of God flows out of Him. This gives us an example to follow in our own suffering but also points us to the answer to the question. Why did the Father reject His beloved and perfect son? God is holy, beautifully perfect, and cannot look upon sin, as the prophet Habakkuk proclaims, “Your eyes are too pure to look on evil, and you cannot tolerate wrongdoing.” (Habakkuk 1:13) So, when Jesus BECAME sin for us, God turned away. But why did Jesus HAVE TO become sin? Isaiah 53:6 answers, “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.”

The sins of the most savage murderer, the vilest racist, the meanest husband and the cruelest bully were poured out on Jesus and He paid the price for all of those sins and more. “He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.” (1 John 2:2) Why was Jesus forsaken? To pay the price for our sins and by being abandoned, He “purchased people for God by [His] blood from every tribe and language and people and nation.” (Revelation 5:9)

We call this act of sacrifice “Good Friday.” Why was it good? Because He was abandoned, those who look to Him in faith believing can be claimed, redeemed, rescued and received as sons by the Father. (Ephesians 2:8-9) Everything you and I deserved fell onto Jesus on the cross that day so that we can be reckoned righteous by faith and therefore have entry into glorious Eternal Life in Heaven. Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift! 

“Oh, the blessed shadow of Christ’s cross! All the flocks of the Lord lie down under it, and rest in peace. Millions of souls are delivered by it from the heat of vengeance, and myriads more shall find a covert within it from the wrath to come. Dear reader, are you within the shadow of the crucified? Does He stand between God and your soul to ward off the burning beams of justice, which your sins so richly deserve, by bearing them Himself? If you die in the fierce heat of divine wrath, you will have yourself alone to blame, for there is the shadow of the great propitiation, cool and refreshing, and it is at every moment accessible to simple faith. Come, now, into the sure and blessed shelter, lest the sunstroke of despair should wither you. Once beneath the shadow of Jesus, the sun shall not smite you by day, nor the moon by night; you shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. “Yahweh is your protector; Yahweh is your shade at your right hand.” (Psa 121:5). - Charles Spurgeon, The Sword and Trowel, 1869.

Grace and Peace,

Pastor Chase

Biography: Dr. Chase A. Thompson pastors Valley Baptist in Salinas, where he and his wife Janet have five children aged 13-24. He graduated from Samford and then earned graduate degrees in missions, biblical studies, and counseling. He has ministered for 30 years and written eight books, including Easter: Fact or Fiction. He is passionate about apologetics, the Gospel, and helping everybody minister according to their spiritual gifts. Chaseathompson@gmail.com