We Call Him Saviour part 6 A lonely Cry

We call him Savior

Lesson 6 The lonely Cry of Calvary

focus scripture

Matthew 27:46

46 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?

My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me? A strange complaint to come from the mouth of our Lord Jesus, who, we are sure, was God's elect, in whom his soul delightedIsaiah 42:1 Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth; I have put my spirit upon him: he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles. ([KJV]), and one in whom he was always well pleased.

The Father loved him, God knew that Jesus would lay down his life for the sheep;

John 10:11 I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.([KJV])

John 10:15 As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep. ([KJV])

yet on the cross Jesus cries out and asks why God has forsaken him. God had forsaken him in the midst of his sufferings too! Surely never sorrow was like unto that sorrow which extorted such a complaint as this from one who, being perfectly free from sin, could never be a terror to himself; but the heart knows its own bitterness. No wonder that such a complaint as this made the earth to quake, and rent the rocks; for it is enough to make both the ears of every one that hears it to tingle, and ought to be spoken of with great reverence.

The summer of 1980 some of us remember it if not most, It was my Jr. year in high school. It was the beginning of a new decade. But the summer of 1980 was nothing to smile about in Miami Florida. The heat scorched the city during the and baked it at nights. It was a time of riots, looting, and racial tensions threatened to snap the frayed attentions of the people. Everything soared: Unemployment was up, Inflation was choking our economy. Crime was having its affect on all that was in the area, young and old rich and poor. The heat was unbearable. Somewhere in the mist of it all a Miami Herald reported captured a story that left the entire Florida coast breathless. It was the story of Judith Bucknell. Attractive, young, successful, and dead.

Judith Bucknewll was homicide number one hundred and six of that year. She was killed on a steamy June 9th evening. Age 38. Weight 109 pounds. Stabbed 7 times and strangled.

She kept a diary. Had she not kept this diary perhaps the memory of her would have been buried with her body. But the diary exist; a painful epitaph to a lonely life.

The correspondent made this comment about her writings: In her diaries, Judy created a character and a voice. The character is herself, wistful, struggling and weary. The voice is yearning , Judith Buckwell has failed to connect. Age 38, many lovers, much love offered, none returned.

Her struggles weren't unusual. She worried about getting old, getting fat, getting married, having children and getting by. She lived in a stylish Coconut Grove. (Coconut grove is where you live if you are lonely but act as if you are happy.)

Judy was the paragon of the confused human being. Half of her life was fantasy, half was nightmare. She was successful as a secretary, but a loser at love. Her diary was filled with entries just like the following: Where are the men with the flowers and cham0pagne and music? Where are the men who call and ask for a genuine, actual date? Where are the men who would like to share more than my bed, my booze, my food.........I would like to have in my life once before I pass through my life, the kind of sexual relationship which is part of a loving relationship. She never did.

Judy was not a prostitute. She was never on drugs or on welfare. She never went to jail. She was not a social outcast. She was respectable in her community. She jogged, she hosted parties. She wore designer clothes and had an apartment that overlooked the bay. And she was very lonely, here is one of her statements from the diary: " I see people together and I am so jealous I want to throw up. What about me! What about me!" Though surrounded by people she was on an island. Though she had many acquaintances, she had few friends. Though she had many lovers, she had little love ( the writer included that there were fifty nine lovers in fifty six months.)

The diary continues: "Who is going to love Judy Bucknell? I feel so old. Unloved, unwanted, abandoned and used up. I want to cry and sleep forever."

A clear message came from her aching words. Though her body died on June 9th from the wounds of a knife, it sounds as if her heart had died long before from loneliness.

She was searching to be set free from this loneliness as she wrote in her diary: " I am alone, and I want to share something with somebody."

Loneliness it is a cry, it's a moan, a wail. It is a gasp whose origin is the recesses of our souls.

Can you hear it? The abandoned child. The divorc`ee. The quiet home. The empty mailbox. The long days and even longer nights. A forgotten birthday. No phone calls on the holidays.

Folks listen up, turn down the TV the cries are there. Our cities, small towns and communities are full of Judy Bucknells. If you will just take notice you can hear them. You can see them as they walk down the streets, as you shop in the stores.

Even just this last week we see, the loneliness within our own small town of Manila, as a young man lost his life, by the hand of his own father over " loneliness" which lead to drowning it in booze and one night stands.

That loneliness is there, you can see it in the nursing homes as you listen to the shuffling of feet. You can hear the cries within the county jails and prisons among the moans of shame and cries for mercy.

You can hear them if you walk the manicured streets of suburban America, among the aborted ambitions and aging homecoming queens. Listen for it in the hall of our high schools as peer pressure weeds out the "haves" and the "have nots"

Scroll through the social media of Facebook, twitter, Instagram and see the loneliness followed by the drama that is plastered across our county.

This moan in a minor key knows all spectrum's of life. From top to bottom, from failers to the famous. From the rich to the poor. From the married to the single. Judy Bucknell was not alone.

Many of you have been spared this cruel cry. Oh you have been homesick a time or two, but have you been in despair? Suicide? Hopefully you have not felt this knocking at your door. Pray that you never will. If you have yet to fight this battle, then praise the Lord because this study is really to those who know this cry firsthand. To those of you whose days are book-ended with broken hearts and long evenings. This lesson is for those who can find a lonely person by simply looking into a mirror.

For you, loneliness is a way of life. Sleepless nights, distrust, the fear of tomorrow. The unending hurt.

When did it begin? In your childhood? At the divorce? At retirement? When the kids left home?

Maybe you like Judy Bucknell have fooled everyone No one knows that you are lonely. On the outside you are packaged perfectly, your smile is quick and you job is stable. Your clothes are sharp. Your waist is thin. Your calendar is full and your walk is brisk. Your talk is impressive but when you look into the mirror you fool no one. When you are alone your impressive smile recedes and your pain surfaces.

Maybe you don't even try to hide it, maybe you have always been on the outside looking in and everyone knows it. Your conversation is a bit awkward. Your companionship is seldom requested. Your clothes are dull and your looks are common. Ziggy is your hero and Charlie Brown is your mentor.

If this has struck a chord or hit a nerve. If you have nodded or sighed at these examples of loneliness. If you know someone that is like the Judy in our story.

I have a very important message for you, and for them that you can share with them.

The most gut wrenching cry of loneliness in history did not come from a prisoner or a widow or a patient. It came from a hill, from a cross, from a Messiah, from the Lord Jesus Christ himself.

Matthew 27:46 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? ([KJV])

Never have words carried so much hurt. Never has one being been so lonely. A cry of affliction and misery. Jesus uses one of David's psalms (Psalms 22) to teach us to pray and speak to our heavenly father when we are afflicted and when we are lonely.

Psalms 22:1 My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring? ([KJV])

Christ's being forsaken of his Father was the most grievous of his sufferings, and that which he complained most of. Here he laid the most doleful accents; he did not say, "Why am I scourged? And why spit upon? And why nailed to the cross?" Nor did he say to his disciples, when they turned their back upon him, Why have ye forsaken me? But when his Father stood at a distance, he cried out.

Why would this cry from Jesus hold such affliction, misery and loneliness?

Because Jesus, took on our sins. He became sin for us. God can not look upon sin.

Isaiah 59:1-2

1 Behold, the LORD'S hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear: 2 But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear. ([KJV])

Habakkuk 1:13 Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity: wherefore lookest thou upon them that deal treacherously, and holdest thy tongue when the wicked devoureth the man that is more righteous than he? ([KJV])

The Lamb of God became our scapegoat. Let's take a moment and look at Leviticus 16:20-22

20 And when he hath made an end of reconciling the holy place, and the tabernacle of the congregation, and the altar, he shall bring the live goat: 21 And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat, and shall send him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness: 22 And the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited: and he shall let go the goat in the wilderness. ([KJV])

In other words, the scene at Calvary or the place of the Skull which was on the outskirts of town was the same as what we read in Leviticus 16:

Story view:The crowd quietens as the priest receives the goat; the pure, unspotted goat. In somber ceremony he places his hands on the young animal. As the people witness, the priest makes his proclamation. "The sins of the people be on you." The innocent animal receives the sins of the Israelites. All the lusting, adultery, and cheating are transferred from the sinners to this goat, this scapegoat.

Then he is carried to the edge of the wilderness and released. Banished. Sin must be purged, so the scapegoat is abandoned. "Run goat run."

The People are relieved, Yahweh is appeased and the sin-bearer is alone.

And now on Calvary, the Lamb of God who shed his blood for you and I becomes our scapegoat, the sin-bearer, is again alone there on a hill. Every lie ever told, every object ever coveted, every promise ever broken, every sin so vile that we dare not mention, to the stealing a penny bubble gum from the grocery store; lies there on the Lamb's shoulders. Jesus has become sin. God turns his head, "Run goat run."

The despair is darker than the sky. The two who have been one are two now. Jesus, who had been with God for eternity, is now alone. The Christ, who was an expression of God is abandoned. The trinity is dismantled The Godhead is disjointed. The unity is dissolved for that moment in time.

It is more than Jesus can take, He withstood the beatings and remained strong at the mock trials. He watched in silence as those he loved ran away. He did not retaliate when the insults where hurled nor did he scream when the nails pierced his wrists.

But when God turned his head, that was more than he could handle. "My God! Wails from his parched lips. The holy heart is broken. The sin-bearer screams as he wanders in the eternal wasteland. Out of the silent sky come the words screamed by all who walk the desert of loneliness " Why? Why have you abandoned me?"

Our Lord Jesus, even when he was thus forsaken of his Father, kept hold of him as

his God, notwithstanding; My God, my God; though forsaking me, yet mine. Christ was God's servant in carrying on the work of redemption, to him he was to make satisfaction, and by him to be carried through and crowned, and upon that account he calls him his God; for he was now doing his will.

Isaiah 49:5-9

5And now, saith the LORD that formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob again to him, Though Israel be not gathered, yet shall I be glorious in the eyes of the LORD, and my God shall be my strength. 6 And he said, It is a light thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel: I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth. 7 Thus saith the LORD, the Redeemer of Israel, and his Holy One, to him whom man despiseth, to him whom the nation abhorreth, to a servant of rulers, Kings shall see and arise, princes also shall worship, because of the LORD that is faithful, and the Holy One of Israel, and he shall choose thee. 8 Thus saith the LORD, In an acceptable time have I heard thee, and in a day of salvation have I helped thee: and I will preserve thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people, to establish the earth, to cause to inherit the desolate heritages; 9 That thou mayest say to the prisoners, Go forth; to them that are in darkness, Shew yourselves. They shall feed in the ways, and their pastures shall be in all high places. ([KJV])

This supported him, and bore him up, that even in the depth of his sufferings God was his God, and this he resolves to keep fast hold of.

Some would ask the question, why did Jesus do this? To gratify the old Law? To fulfill prophecy? All these answers are correct. But there is something more, something very compassionate, something personal. What is it?

The words that Judy wrote in here diary listen to them once more....... "I feel abandoned, who is going to love Judith Bucknell?"

Oh my friend let me tell you right now, tonight, this moment.....Jesus loved Judy, that is why he went to the cross. Maybe Judy just did not see that love, she did not reach out and take that love (grace) that Christ offered, Maybe no one reach out to her and shared that message with her.

Hebrews 13:5-6

5 Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. 6 So that we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me. ([KJV])

We think of the parents of a dying or dead child, or the friend at the hospital bedside. The elderly in the nursing home, or the orphans. Or the cancer wards.

Think about all the people who cast despairing eyes toward the dark heavens and cry Why?

I can imagine him listening, as he reaches out his hand and says come to me my child. I understand. I have been in your shoes, I have felt this loneliness and abandonment. I have felt it so that you would not have to.......I Jesus will love you...........your not alone anymore.

We do not know if Judith Bucknell had ever made a profession of Faith, what we do see is that she was missing something in her life, that she longed so desperately someone to love her......little did she know Jesus was there all the time, as the Gospel song says.

It is too late to change anything for Judith, her time is gone. But it is not to late for you if you do not have a personal relationship with Christ.

If you know someone like Judith and they are not saved you can share his message with them, do so before it is to late for them also.