Eloi

First Series – Sermon Eight

Original by George MacDonald

Paraphrase by Dale R. Howie

 

The Eloi is probably one of the most misunderstood and misinterpreted passages in the Gospels. Theologians have sometimes done more to hide the Gospel of Christ than its adversaries by dividing the Father from the Son. But there is no such division within the Trinity. “For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And He gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation.” (2 Corinthians 5:19 NLT)

There is no sweet Jesus standing between us and an angry, punishing Father. Our Abba bears the scars of His Son’s crucifixion. Jesus did not die to change His Father’s mind about us, but to change our minds about Them. They had always intended to give Themselves for us. The cross was not plan “B” after Adam’s fall, but plan “A”—the revealing and releasing of Their Life in us.

“But when the fullness of the time came, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons and daughters.” (Galatians 4:4–5 NASB)

The cry, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” does not reveal a division between the Father and the Son. It reveals the depth to which the Son entered our darkness and the relationship of faith from which He still cried, “My God.”

Last Temptation

Of all the words ever spoken, the Eloi are among the most important. Within them lie both the seed and the fruit of the Divine devotion to creation, as well as the deepest practical lesson the human heart must learn. The Logos, the Revealer, hides nothing from us. With transparent humility, He reveals this terrible conflict between Himself and evil.

Jesus gives us His final thoughts before His death. When He could bear no more, He fled into the loving arms of His Father—the Father who was well pleased with Him. Yet at this critical moment, Satan came with one final temptation.

The temptation was that although Jesus had done His part, the Father had forgotten His.

Jesus did not hide His suffering from us, for truth is light within the minds of men. The Holy One, the Father’s Son, had nothing to conceal, but all the heart of the Trinity to reveal. Let us take off our shoes and draw near to this holy ground. Let us bow our heads and kiss the feet that forever bear the scars of our victory.

 

Outline

Sermon Question: What does Jesus' cry, "My God… why have You forsaken Me?" reveal?

 

P1 - Last Temptation – The final temptation was not pain, but believing the Father had forgotten His Son.

 

      P2 - Cry of Faith – When every feeling of God's presence disappeared, the faith of the Son still cried, "My God."

 

            T - All Assumed (Vicarious Life) – Christ entered the deepest loneliness of humanity so no child of God would ever walk there alone.

      R2 - Spiritual Dryness – Darkness is not the absence of God but the place where the Father teaches His children to trust beyond their feelings.

 R1 - Oneness of Will – As our wills freely unite with the Father's will, darkness gives way to the freedom and fellowship of sonship.

 

Matthew 27:46 NASB

 "And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabaktanei?” that is, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”

 

Cry of Faith

Question: What was Satan's final temptation?

It is with holy reverence that we approach the suffering of our Lord. Let no one imagine that His suffering was less because He was more. The more perfect the nature, the more alive it is to all that is lovely and true, lawful and right, and therefore the more deeply it feels the intrusion of death and all that opposes the harmony of Life.

Jesus suffered beyond anything we can imagine because He was Himself the Source of Life. Every blow, every rejection, every wound was felt in the fullness of His humanity. As His strength failed and His human will grew weary beneath the weight of suffering, the conscious awareness of His Father's presence seemed to fade into darkness. Never before had He known such an experience. Never before had He been unaware of His Father beside Him.

Then came the cry:

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

Yet never was His Father nearer than now.

Here, perhaps more than anywhere else in His earthly life, Jesus reveals the very heart of God. He could neither see nor feel His Father's presence, yet it is still "My God" that He cries.

In that moment His faith stood alone. No feelings supported it. No beautiful vision sustained it. His soul was as stripped bare as His body had been before Pilate. His faith was pure, simple, and surrounded by fire as He stood for God. The cry did not rise from happiness, peace, or even hope, but from faith alone. Truth spoke when it could do nothing more than cry.

The horror of that darkness is beyond our imagination. Yet even there He refused to loosen His hold upon His Father. The cry itself became His victory. “The Father was still His Father.” And when the battle had passed, there followed the peace of the perfect soul—deeper than the universe, purer than light, more passionate than ever, victorious for God and for His brothers and sisters.

Only Jesus knows the breadth and length and depth and height of that victory.

Answer: To persuade Jesus that His Father had abandoned Him after He had faithfully completed His work.

 

All Assumed (Vicarious Life)

Question: Why is Jesus' cry called a cry of faith?

This last trial, the final temptation of our Lord, had not yet filled the cup of our humanity. There still remained one place every son and daughter of Adam must one day enter—a place where every visible assurance has vanished, where hope itself appears extinguished, and where the heart can do nothing but cry to God. Had our Lord not assumed even this final depth of our humanity, there would have remained one place where no human voice could answer ours.

The temptations of the wilderness belonged to another time and another kind of conflict. Now, after three years of revealing His Father through every word and deed, the hour had come to complete His work. His body had been tortured, His life's blood poured out, and His disciples had fled. Then the enemy came with one final temptation:

"Despair and die. God is not with You. All is empty, and death is your only refuge. You have been deceived. He was the God of Abraham—but Abraham is dead. Who made You?"

The Master's answer was not an argument but a cry.

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

Even here, when every human feeling declared otherwise, His Father was still His Father. The darkness itself became the place where His faith shone most brightly. What appeared to be abandonment was, in truth, the final assuming of our darkness, that no one would ever again have to enter it alone. His Father was nearer than ever in His delivery of Life. This birth was happening as He withdrew from their sight, that He might dwell in their beings forever!

I do not believe Gethsemane was His greatest trial. There His will was still strong, and His communion with His Father remained clear. But now the cup had been emptied to its final drop. He assumed the deepest loneliness known to humanity, not because the Father had departed from Him, but because every child who would one day feel abandoned must discover that Christ had already stood in that very place.

Crucifixion revealed the faith of the Son of God. The Father withdrew, as it were, not to forsake His Son, but that the perfect trust of the Son might shine forth in its fullest glory. Here the Son assumed even the apparent absence of God, so that no son or daughter would ever mistake that darkness for the absence of the Father's love.

Perhaps even then He was thinking of the lost sheep who could not believe His God was their Father. He assumed their blindness, their loss, and their unlove. He cried the words they themselves would one day need to cry, believing for them that God still meant Father—and infinitely more.

What a fearful thing it is to live without hope and without God in the world!

Answer: Because when every feeling of the Father's presence disappeared, Jesus still addressed Him as "My God."

 

Spiritual Dryness

Question: What should we do when God seems absent?

What can this Alpine summit of faith have to do with those who call themselves Christians? Christians who still creep through the valleys, scarcely lifting their eyes to the mountains above them. Christians who notice only the pebbles beneath their feet, washed across their path by the glacier streams, while forgetting the heights to which Christ has already climbed.

We remain these creeping Christians so long as we look chiefly at ourselves instead of Christ. We become occupied with our failures, examining our own footprints, or comparing them with those of our neighbors, imagining that somehow ours are closer to the Master's. Yet all the while our eyes have left the One we are meant to follow.

Sometimes we commit some petty wrong and then make a great display of our shame before family and friends, when what is needed is simply to confess it, make it right with the one we have wronged, and move on. Our eyes belong upon the glory of the Lord, not upon the endless examination of ourselves. It is His beauty that gives life to the true man within and brings the false self to its proper end. The true self looks at Jesus face-to-face and says, My Lord.

Life is not difficult when our souls are filled with brightness, when our thoughts move like gentle breezes through the flower gardens of our imagination. In such seasons it is easy to say, "My God." Even in times of manageable suffering we readily hope in Him for strength and deliverance.

But what are we to do when all hope seems gone? What happens when we are no longer certain we believe, or even love as we once did? When beauty no longer stirs us, and pain, disappointment, temptation, or depression have hidden every evidence of God's nearness? In such moments we are tempted to believe not only that we have failed God, but that God has failed us.

Yet God has not failed us. Rather, it is our thoughts concerning Him that have failed.

If we know God only in the sunshine, or only while we feel Him near, then we are still children blown about by every wind. Beautiful reeds blown in the wind, not wicked, but poor children.

How then do we respond when darkness comes? Do we mourn the loss of our pleasant feelings? Do we struggle to recover them? Or do we surrender to discouragement and unbelief? Perhaps we simply become careless, allowing ourselves to drift because we have grown weary of resisting. Left to ourselves, we may remain asleep unless something awakens us from without.

Why does God not simply remove all this by an immediate gift of His Spirit? Why not instantly fill us with purity, desire, and love? The answer is not because He is unwilling, nor because He lacks the power. It is because His purpose is greater.

The Father is not merely making us comfortable.

He is making us like Himself.

Therefore, He gives us room to become. He does not overwhelm our wills with His power, but, God "stands away" so that we may truly choose the good. Do not misunderstand this. We can do nothing apart from Him. Every good choice is sustained by His grace. Yet the more He enables our response without replacing it, the more truly our response becomes our own.

All our lives He has been educating us—drawing us, leading us, correcting us, attracting us toward Himself. He is not raising servants who merely obey, but sons and daughters who freely share His heart.

Our individuality is itself one of His greatest miracles. He made us distinct from Himself so that our freedom might become the very means of our union with Him. The freer the child becomes, the deeper the fellowship with the Father who gave that freedom. He is making our wills truly free, for only free sons and daughters can fully share the life of their Father.

It is in choosing the Truth despite our weakness, our fears, and our changing feelings that we begin to enter true freedom. There, at last, we discover Life itself.

Answer: Keep our eyes on Christ, continue choosing the good, and trust that God's presence is not measured by our feelings.

 

Oneness of Will

Question: How do we pass from darkness into light?

See what lies within our reach every time we are clothed in darkness. The highest awareness of the human will lies before us. I do not mean the highest condition of the human being, for that lies in the beautiful vision of Christ. I mean the highest awareness of the human will itself. This distinction is not separation from God. It is that, though we neither see Him nor seem able to hold Him, we discover that He still holds us fast. We cannot remain in such darkness forever, for we would perish there. But as we exercise our wills, we pass from darkness into light. In that freedom, freely embraced, the child discovers himself one with his Father.

His child is restored to fellowship, where childhood and Fatherhood meet as one. The brotherhood of humanity rises from the dust, and the prayer of Jesus begins to find its fulfillment:

"I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be made perfect in one."

Then let our prayer be as simple as this:

"My God, I am dull and hard, and You are wise and tender as my Father. I am Your child. Forsake me not."

Having prayed, let us rest in our faith—but not from our work. Let us not wait for brighter feelings before we obey. Think of what lies before you to do, and go and do it. Whether it is to sweep a room, prepare a meal, visit a friend, or speak a needed word, do not let your feelings rule you. Exercise the will your Father is awakening within you.

For as God lives by His will, and we live by Him, so He has given us the power to will in ourselves.

The Father was still His Father.

Then, when the time comes—as perhaps it must come to each of us—a time when every awareness of well-being has vanished; when men and women delight us no more; when even the Father seems only a name and Jesus only a story; when death has gripped our hearts and slain our love, our hope, and even our faith, leaving only the agony of existence—then, even then, we shall be able to cry with our Lord.

"My God."

Neither, I think, shall we be ready to die until we can speak with Jesus those final words:

"Father, into Your hands I commend my spirit."

Answer: By exercising the freedom God has given us, trusting Him even when we cannot see Him, until our wills become one with the Father's in love.

Sermon Answer: It reveals not a separation within the Trinity, but the perfect faith of the Son entering the deepest darkness of our humanity while never ceasing to trust His Father.

 

  

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Continue your Quest . . .

Next Sermon - Hands of the Father

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Last Temptation

 

“He will give us even to meditate the one thought that slew him at last, when he could bear no more, and fled to the Father to know that he loved him, and was well-pleased with him. For Satan had come at length yet again, to urge him with his last temptation; to tell him that although he had done his part, God had forgotten his.”

 “The Lord hides not his sacred sufferings, for truth is light, and would be light in the minds of men. The Holy Child, the Son of the Father, has nothing to conceal, but all the Godhead to reveal. Let us then put off our shoes, and draw near, and bow the head, and kiss those feet that bear for ever the scars of our victory.”

 

Cry of Faith

 

“Let no one think that those were less because he was more.”

 “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Never had it been so with him before. Never before had he been unable to see God beside him. Yet never was God nearer him than now. For never was Jesus more divine. He could not see, could not feel him near; and yet it is "My God" that he cries.”

“Without this last trial of all, the temptations of our Master had not been so full as the human cup could hold; there would have been one region through which we had to pass wherein we might call aloud upon our Captain-Brother, and there would be no voice or hearing: he had avoided the fatal spot!”

 

All Assumed

 

"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" the Master cries. For God was his God still, although he had forsaken him—forsaken his vision that his faith might glow out triumphant; forsaken himself? no; come nearer to him than ever; come nearer, even as—but with a yet deeper, more awful pregnancy of import—even as the Lord himself withdrew from the bodily eyes of his friends, that he might dwell in their profoundest being.”

“This is the Faith of the Son of God. God withdrew, as it were, that the perfect Will of the Son might arise and go forth to find the Will of the Father.”

 “Is it possible that even then he thought of the lost sheep who could not believe that God was their Father; and for them, too, in all their loss and blindness and unlove, cried, saying the word they might say, knowing for them that God means Father and more, and knowing now, as he had never known till now, what a fearful thing it is to be without God and without hope?”

 

Spiritual Dryness

 

“I will tell you. We are and remain such creeping Christians, because we look at ourselves and not at Christ; because we gaze at the marks of our own soiled feet, and the trail of our own defiled garments, instead of up at the snows of purity, whither the soul of Christ climb. Each, putting his foot in the footprint of the Master, and so defacing it, turns to examine how far his neighbour's footprint corresponds with that which he still calls the Master's, although it is but his own.”

 “Forgetting our paltry self with its well-earned disgrace, lift up our eyes to the glory which alone will quicken the true man in us, and kill the peddling creature we so wrongly call our self. The true self is that which can look Jesus in the face, and say My Lord.”

 “When a man does not know whether he believes or not, whether he loves or not? when art, poetry, religion are nothing to him, so swallowed up is he in pain, or mental depression, or disappointment, or temptation, or he knows not what? It seems to him then that God does not care for him, and certainly he does not care for God. If he is still humble, he thinks that he is so bad that God cannot care for him. And he then believes for the time that God loves us only because and when and while we love him; instead of believing that God loves us always because he is our God, and that we live only by his love.”

 “The truth is this: He wants to make us in his own image, choosing the good, refusing the evil.”

 “His than if he had kept us filled with all holy impulses precluding the need of choice. For up to this very point, for this very point, he has been educating us, leading us, pushing us, driving us, enticing us, that we may choose him and his will, and so be tenfold more his children, of his own best making.”

 “For God made our individuality as well as, and a greater marvel than, our dependence; made our apartness from himself, that freedom should bind us divinely dearer to himself, with a new and inscrutable marvel of love; for the Godhead is still at the root, is the making root of our individuality, and the freer the man, the stronger the bond that binds him to him who made his freedom. He made our wills, and is striving to make them free; for only in the perfection of our individuality and the freedom of our wills call we be altogether his children. This is full of mystery, but can we not see enough in it to make us very glad and very peaceful?”

 “Not in any other act than one which, in spite of impulse or of weakness, declares for the Truth, for God, does the will spring into absolute freedom, into true life.”

 

Oneness of Will

 

“But the highest condition of the Human Will, as distinct, not as separated from God, is when, not seeing God, not seeming to itself to grasp him at all, it yet holds him fast. It cannot continue in this condition, for, not finding, not seeing God, the man would die; but the will thus asserting itself, the man has passed from death into life, and the vision is nigh at hand. Then first, thus free, in thus asserting its freedom, is the individual will one with the Will of God; the child is finally restored to the father; the childhood and the fatherhood meet in one; the brotherhood of the race arises from the dust; and the prayer of our Lord is answered, "I in them and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one."

 "My God, I am very dull and low and hard; but thou art wise and high and tender, and thou art my God. I am thy child. Forsake me not." Then fold the arms of thy faith, and wait in quietness until light goes up in thy darkness. Fold the arms of thy Faith I say, but not of thy Action: bethink thee of something that thou oughtest to do, and go and do it, if it be but the sweeping of a room, or the preparing of a meal, or a visit to a friend. Heed not thy feelings: Do thy work.”

 “As God lives by his own will, and we live in him, so has he given to us power to will in ourselves.”

 “Then, if ever the time should come, as perhaps it must come to each of us, when all consciousness of well-being shall have vanished, when the earth shall be but a sterile promontory, and the heavens a dull and pestilent congregation of vapours, when man nor woman shall delight us more, nay, when God himself shall be but a name, and Jesus an old story, then, even then, when a Death far worse than "that phantom of grisly bone" is griping at our hearts, and having slain love, hope, faith, forces existence upon us only in agony, then, even then, we shall be able to cry out with our Lord, "My God.”