{"id":5705,"date":"2020-04-26T08:50:47","date_gmt":"2020-04-26T08:50:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/?p=5705"},"modified":"2020-04-26T08:50:47","modified_gmt":"2020-04-26T08:50:47","slug":"consider-jesus-as-forsaken-by-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/?p=5705","title":{"rendered":"Consider Jesus\u2013 as Forsaken by God"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Consider Jesus\u2013 as Forsaken by God<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Octavius Winslow<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy God, my God, why have You forsaken me?\u201d \u2013Matt. 27:46<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My soul! was it not enough that your Lord should be forsaken of man in His sorrow? Was it essential to the accomplishment of your salvation, and to your support and comfort in seasons of soul desertion and darkness, that He should likewise be forsaken of God? Yes! it must be so. The history of the universe never presented such an abandonment\u2013a being so holy, and yet so entirely and so severely forsaken of God and man\u2013as that which Jesus was now experiencing upon the accursed tree. With what a depth of emphasis that word must have sounded from His pale lips, quivering with agony\u2013\u201c\u2018My God, my God, why have YOU FORSAKEN me?\u2019 You, my Father\u2013You whose glory I am vindicating, whose government I am honouring, whose Name I am glorifying, whose Church I am redeeming\u2013why, my God, my God, have YOU forsaken me? I can endure to be abandoned by man, but to be forsaken by YOU, my Father, in the hour of my deepest sorrow, at the moment of my keenest suffering, is the bitterest ingredient in my cup of bitter, the darkest hue in my cloud of darkness.\u201d Let us devoutly consider Jesus as passing through this eclipse of His soul, and receive the holy instruction and comfort the spectacle was designed to convey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of WHOM was Jesus forsaken? His Father. And when, O my soul! you walk in a sense of divine desertion, who is it that says to you, \u201cFor a small moment have I forsaken you, but with great mercies will I gather you?\u201d \u2013it is your Father in heaven. It is a Father\u2019s momentary withdrawment; and although this thought adds keenness to the discipline and intensity to the cloud, is there no consolation in knowing that the hiding is paternal\u2013a Father secreting Himself from His child\u2013and but for a moment? Thus, though He hides Himself, He is a Father still.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, what was a cloud of thick, all-enshrouding darkness to Jesus is salvation\u2019s light to us. Even as His sorrow is our joy, His wounds our healing, His death our life\u2013so His abandonment on the cross, as a foreign divine expresses it, is \u201cour bridge to heaven; an unfathomable abyss for all our sins, cares, and anxieties; the charter of our citizenship, the key whereby we may open the secret chamber of communion with God.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus, if you are, O my soul! walking in darkness and have no light, let the thought be as a ray playing on the brow of your cloud, that, it is not the darkness of hell and condemnation, but the darkness only through which all the \u2018children of light\u2019 more or less travel\u2013the darkness with which the Sun of Righteousness Himself was enshrouded\u2013and which, when it is past, will make the sunshine of God\u2019s love and the Saviour\u2019s presence all the sweeter, dearer, brighter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And how did Jesus deport Himself in this season of Divine forsaking? What supported and comforted Him during this total and dreadful eclipse through which His sinless soul passed? He trusted in God. His faith could still exclaim, \u201cMY God, MY God.\u201d So lean upon your covenant God, O you children of light walking in darkness. As the veiling clouds, though they hide, cannot extinguish the sun, neither can your gloomy seasons of Divine desertion extinguish one beam of the Saviour\u2019s love to you. If all is dark\u2013a hidden God, an absent Saviour, a frowning providence\u2013now is the time to have faith in God. \u201cWho is among you that walks in darkness, and has no light? let him trust in the name of the lord, and stay upon his God.\u201d Stay yourself upon His covenant faithfulness and unchanging love, and believe that Jesus intercedes for you in heaven, and that soon you shall reach that blissful world where your sun shall no more go down, nor your moon withdraw itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Consider Jesus\u2013 as Forsaken by God Octavius Winslow \u201cMy God, my God, why have You forsaken me?\u201d \u2013Matt. 27:46 My soul! was it not enough that your Lord should be forsaken of man in His sorrow? Was it essential to the accomplishment of your salvation, and to your support and comfort in seasons of soul […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,129,131],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-author-octavius-winslow","category-complete-in-christ","category-gods-justice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5705"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5706,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5705\/revisions\/5706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}