by Pastor Joseph Cortes He Hath Not Hid His Face From Him There is another reason I believe we should be careful about saying that the Father abandoned Jesus upon the cross. We should keep reading Psalm 22. People often stop at the opening line, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” But the Psalm does not stop there. Psalm 22:24 says, “For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; neither hath he hid his face from him; but when he cried unto him, he heard.” Those words are extremely important. The very Psalm Jesus quoted eventually says that God had not hidden His face from the afflicted One and that when He cried, God heard Him. Psalm 16 gives another remarkable prophecy concerning Christ. Verse 10 says, “For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.” The cross was horrible. The suffering was real. The rejection was real. The nails were real. The blood was real. The pain was real. Death was real. But God’s plan was not defeated. The Father had not forgotten His Son. Heaven was not watching helplessly while everything spiraled out of control. The cross was part of the plan, and Jesus knew exactly where that plan was leading. There is something deeply comforting about seeing the cross this way. Even in His suffering, Jesus was pointing people back to the Word of God. He was telling them to remember what Moses wrote, remember what David wrote, remember what Isaiah wrote, remember what Zechariah wrote, and remember what God had promised. The cross was not proof that God’s promises had failed. The cross was proof that God’s promises were being fulfilled. Imagine those who loved Jesus standing nearby. Everything they had hoped for must have seemed shattered. They believed He was the Messiah. They watched Him heal the sick. They heard Him teach. Some had seen Him raise the dead. They believed He was the One who was to come, and now He was hanging upon a Roman cross. From the human point of view, it looked like defeat. But Scripture tells us the story from God’s point of view. The cross was not defeat. It was accomplishment. The cross was not the end of the promise. It was the fulfillment of the promise.

by Pastor Joseph Cortes “My God, My God, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?” When we come to the crucifixion, we arrive at one of the most solemn moments in all of Scripture. Jesus is hanging upon the cross. He has been mocked, beaten, humiliated, rejected, and nailed between criminals. Then Matthew 27:46 records, “And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” For years I struggled with those words. Many of us have heard them explained as though God the Father completely turned away from His Son or abandoned Him on the cross. That interpretation is repeated so often that many people never stop to consider the possibility that Jesus was drawing attention to something much deeper. Those words did not originate at Calvary. They are the opening words of Psalm 22. Jesus was quoting Scripture. That changes the way we hear what He said. We live in a world where we identify passages by chapter and verse. We say Psalm 22:1, Psalm 22:16, or Psalm 22:18. But the people standing around the cross did not have our modern chapter and verse system. A familiar passage could be identified by its opening words. So when Jesus cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” those who knew the Scriptures would have immediately recognized the opening line of Psalm 22. Jesus was directing their attention back to that prophetic Psalm. Psalm 22 reads almost like someone standing beneath the cross describing what was happening. Verse 6 says, “But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people.” Jesus had been despised. The religious leaders mocked Him. The soldiers made sport of Him. People passing by insulted Him. Matthew 27:39 says, “And they that passed by reviled him, wagging their heads.” Psalm 22:7-8 says, “All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, He trusted on the LORD that he would deliver him: let him deliver him.” Imagine standing there and hearing Jesus speak the opening words of this Psalm while those very actions were unfolding before your eyes.

by Pastor Joseph Cortes The Scriptures Testify of Him Jesus says in John 5:31, “If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true.” At first, those words sound strange. Jesus was not saying that anything He said about Himself was false. He was speaking according to the principle that a testimony should be established by witnesses. In other words, He was telling those who heard Him that they did not have to believe who He was simply because He said it. God had already surrounded the identity of Jesus with evidence. John the Baptist testified of Him. The works Jesus performed testified of Him. The Father testified of Him. And the Scriptures testified of Him. As Jesus continued in John 5:32-37, “There is another that beareth witness of me; and I know that the witness which he witnesseth of me is true. Ye sent unto John, and he bare witness unto the truth. But I receive not testimony from man: but these things I say, that ye might be saved. He was a burning and a shining light: and ye were willing for a season to rejoice in his light. But I have greater witness than that of John: for the works which the Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do, bear witness of me, that the Father hath sent me. And the Father himself, which hath sent me, hath borne witness of me.” Jesus was making it clear that the evidence concerning Him was not based on one witness alone. The testimony concerning Him had been established again and again. The part I want to focus on is the testimony of the Scriptures. Jesus was speaking about what we now call the Old Testament, writings that existed long before He was born in Bethlehem, long before He walked through Galilee, long before He entered Jerusalem, and long before He went to the cross. Yet those ancient writings contained remarkable details concerning the Messiah who would one day come. Jesus said in John 5:46-47, “For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?” Think about that statement. Jesus said Moses wrote about Him. The coming of Christ was not something God invented at the last moment. Redemption was woven into the Scriptures from the beginning.

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