{"id":331,"date":"2014-04-14T11:14:49","date_gmt":"2014-04-14T11:14:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/parkwood.org\/blog\/?p=331"},"modified":"2015-03-03T18:44:37","modified_gmt":"2015-03-03T18:44:37","slug":"an-inconvenient-faith-35","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/parkwood.dreamhosters.com\/blog\/an-inconvenient-faith-35\/","title":{"rendered":"An Inconvenient Faith (35)"},"content":{"rendered":"

“From the sixth hour to the ninth hour darkness came over all the land. About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani’ – which means, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'”<\/em> (Matthew 27:45, 46)<\/p>\n

It has been a long journey for Jesus.\u00a0 He laid aside His divine privileges and came from the throne room of heaven to a manger in Bethlehem.\u00a0 He lived 3 decades as one of us growing up in a poor family in the small town of Nazareth.\u00a0 He spent 3 years in a ministry of teaching, healing, and revealing to us what the Kingdom is all about.\u00a0 His last 3 days will be spent giving up His life as a sacrifice for our sin and His last 3 hours will be spent in the dark.<\/p>\n

Have you ever been forsaken?\u00a0 Have you ever felt abandoned?\u00a0 It is in this unnatural darkness in the middle of the day that Jesus will experience the worst of it…the feeling of being abandon by God.\u00a0 The ultimate consequence of sin is the broken fellowship with our Creator.\u00a0 It is the definition of death in the Scripture…separation from God.\u00a0 Jesus cries out after three hours of darkness to the Father and suffers the ultimate feeling of despair and loneliness.\u00a0 His friends had left Him and His enemies were mocking Him.\u00a0 And now He experiences the depth of sins consequences…darkness.<\/p>\n

The sacrifice of Jesus on the cross was a cosmic event.\u00a0 The entire universe was rattled as it’s creator breathed His last.\u00a0 The ripple effects of that Friday had an impact on all of the world we see and the spiritual world that we do not see.\u00a0 It seems appropriate that the last three hours of the Savior’s life are spent in darkness.\u00a0 Why?<\/p>\n

Maybe it was because no one could bear to look upon the Lord as the full weight of our sin was taken upon His already mangled body.\u00a0 It could have been a physical sign of a greater spiritual reality.\u00a0 Jesus had to go into the darkness for us so that we could come again into the light.\u00a0 The Scripture always uses darkness to describe our sinful condition, “the people who dwell in darkness have seen a great light.”<\/em>\u00a0 Or maybe all of creation bows it’s head and mourns the loss of the Lamb of God.\u00a0 Whatever the reasons Jesus cries out from the cross using the words from Psalm 22 which is the prophesy describing His feelings at that moment.\u00a0 We don’t have to wonder what He was thinking.<\/p>\n

Can you take a moment today to read Psalm 22?\u00a0 Think about the fact that this was how Jesus felt as He drank the very last drops from this cup for you and I.\u00a0 Then do one more thing…read the next Psalm.\u00a0 It is no accident that Psalm 23 immediately follows.\u00a0 The Psalm of such suffering is followed by the Psalm of ultimate comfort.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

“The Lord is my Shepherd”<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“From the sixth hour to the ninth hour darkness came over all the land. About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani’ – which means, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-an-inconvenient-faith-2014-lenten-blog","category-all_posts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/parkwood.dreamhosters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/parkwood.dreamhosters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/parkwood.dreamhosters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parkwood.dreamhosters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parkwood.dreamhosters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=331"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/parkwood.dreamhosters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":337,"href":"http:\/\/parkwood.dreamhosters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331\/revisions\/337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/parkwood.dreamhosters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parkwood.dreamhosters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parkwood.dreamhosters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}