Jesus cries on the cross for us. He suffers and cries and dies in our place. He is forsaken by his father so we don’t have to be.
Ever since the fall into sin, the voices of God’s people have cried out for deliverance. Throughout the pages of the Bible the cries go out and echo down the corridor of time.
The people of God have always cried out with one voice. The patriarchs cried out to God in times of trouble. The Children of Israel enslaved in Egypt cried out to God for deliverance. The Israelites captive in Babylon cried out for liberation and a return to their home. In the New Testament, Zachariah, Elizabeth, and Mary, along with Simeon and Anna in the temple, cried out as they waited patiently and confidently, knowing that their deliverer was coming.
The prophets looked forward to a day when God would come down to set things straight, make things right, and deal definitively with the enemies of sin, death, and the devil. “Rejoice, O Zion! Cry out, O Jerusalem! Look, your king is coming to you. He is righteous and brings salvation, humble and riding on a donkey” (Zech. 9:9).
In his song “My Deliverer,” Rich Mullins writes:
Joseph took his wife and her child and they went to Africa to escape the rage of a deadly king.
There along the banks of the Nile, Jesus listened to the song that the captive children used to sing…
My Deliverer is coming,
My Deliverer is standing by.
In the song, Jesus hears the songs of his people and their cries for help as though they were still echoing in the distance from centuries before.
There in the Sahara winds Jesus heard the whole world cry
For the healing that flowed from His own scars
My Deliverer is coming,
My Deliverer is standing by.He will never break his promise, though I doubt my heart, I doubt my eyes
My deliverer is coming,
my deliverer is standing by.
What a profound picture of Jesus not missing one single solitary cry of pain, as not one word from God’s people falls upon deaf ears.
After riding into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday to usher in the last week of his earthly life, it was time for yet another cry. All of the mystery of Israel’s history would climax and culminate in one final cry. We call it the cry of dereliction. After being mocked by the masses, betrayed by Judas, denied by Peter, unjustly accused, sentenced to death, scourged by soldiers, crowned with thorns, stricken, smitten, and afflicted, condemned, abandoned, and alone, it all comes down to the cry from the cross, “Eli, Eli Lama Sabachthani!” or “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Jesus cries on the cross for us. He suffers and cries and dies in our place. He is forsaken by his father so we don’t have to be. He is abandoned and alone so we never will be. And his promise to us is this: “I will never leave you nor forsake you. I will be with you always, to the very end of the age.”
The shortest verse in the English Bible is “Jesus wept” (John 11:35). But the shortest verse in Greek is “Rejoice always” (1 Thess. 5:16). Because Jesus wept, we can rejoice always.
