The Hidden Life Of Jesus
By Johnny Tatum
#11) JESUS HAS NO FELLOWSHIP WITH
THE FATHER
As the courts question Jesus, He is silent; however, Jesus is thinking.
[ISAIAH 50, continued]
8 He who vindicates Me is near;
Jesus is about to find out that this is not exactly right.
Picture: In a way, Jesus is like Samson, who had his hair shaved off when he though he had his power but he did not (see Judges 16:1-31). The Human Being, Jesus—in a very tragic situation—thinks Help is near, but it is not.
Jesus is still thinking:
Who will contend with Me? Let us stand up to each other; Who has a case against Me? Let him draw near to Me.
Jesus cannot say Yes and He cannot say No when the courts ask Him about Sin. However, in His mind, Jesus knows that He will be ultimately vindicated.
9 Behold, the Lord GOD helps Me;
Jesus is saying Adonai (Lord) Yahweh (God in the sense of Protector of Israel).
Who is he who condemns Me?
Did you notice that Jesus’ thinking is different than what we have seen? [And it is going to get more obvious.]
When Jesus was young, He learned through the teaching of His parents and by reading the Scriptures with emphasis on the passages Holy Spirit illuminated. As Jesus got older, He learned through direct communication with His Father. Now, however, that relationship with His Father is gone and Jesus is thinking on His own. Clearly, there is no sin in Jesus’ thinking, because He never sinned.
The thinking we are seeing does not even sound like Jesus because He is thinking just as a Human Being. For example, let us get a glimpse of what Jesus is thinking about the people who are trying Him:
Behold, they will all wear out like a garment; The moth will eat them.
Does that sound like the Jesus we know? To me, it does not. All of His life Jesus has steered clear of judging people, though He had every right to judge them. Even during His ministry, Jesus said:
For God did not send the Son into the world to judge. (John 3:17)
Here, at the end of His life, Jesus is starting to judge people with a righteous judgment. [Again, it is not sin.]
During His trials, Jesus saw all of the people accusing Him. Here in the courtyard of the high priest, Jesus looks through the cold night air and He sees a group sitting around a fire, which they had kindled in the middle of that courtyard. What is Jesus thinking when He sees this going on?
11 Behold, all you who kindle a fire, Who encircle yourselves with firebrands, Walk in the light of your fire And among the brands you have set ablaze. This you will have from My hand: You will lie down in torment.
Jesus is looking at His enemies and thinking You will lie down in torment; You will be burned at My hands. All of His thinking is on His own, and He is judging. We have never heard Jesus pronounce judgment.
What is the difference between the Jesus we know and the Jesus who is thinking this?
Jesus’
human side is totally directing His thinking.
Remember: The relationship with the Father is gone, because Jesus is a cursed Man. [I believe-] He is getting no direction from His Father – no direction from Holy Spirit.
Intellectually, Jesus knows the following:
At this point, Jesus’ mind must be numb from what has been happening. And the next time He prays, He is going to be shocked.
Presented In The Gospels:
Pilate convicts Jesus – He is beaten again – He is condemned to the Cross:
Then he released Barabbas for them; but after having Jesus scourged, he delivered Him to be crucified. (Matthew 27:26)
Jesus carries His Cross for a while through the streets of Jerusalem:
They took Jesus therefore, and He went out, bearing His own cross. (John 19:17)
Jesus cannot carry the Cross anymore; and an African man, Simon, receives His Cross and carries it for Him:
And as they were coming out, they found a man of Cyrene named Simon, whom they pressed into service to bear His cross. (Matthew 27:32)
They come to a place called Golgotha meaning Place of a Skull, and they crucify Jesus:
And when they had come to a place called Golgotha, which means Place of a Skull, they gave Him wine to drink mingled with gall; and after tasting it, He was unwilling to drink. And when they had crucified Him, they divided up His garments among themselves, casting lots; and sitting down, they began to keep watch over Him there. (Matthew 27:35-36)
The Crucifixion Process:
Crucifixes had many different shapes: sometimes there was a pole with no crossbeam—the reason the Cross is called the tree—and sometimes there was a pole with a crossbeam. The soldiers would lay the Cross down on the ground and then lay the victim’s back onto the Cross. The victim’s wrists would be nailed to the horizontal crossbeam, and, normally, his ankles would be nailed to the vertical pole. At the bottom of the cross, there was a peg for his feet to rest on [which was not there for mercy]. The victim is in great agony from this whole procedure, but it gets worse. The soldiers lift up the cross and then drop it into a pre-dug hole. When that happens, the victim’s body is jarred and his collarbone separates so he cannot lift his arms anymore.
There are no
recorded thoughts of Jesus during the crucifixion process, which took hours.
On the way to Golgotha, Jesus did speak to some women who were mourning and lamenting Him:
“Daughters of Jerusalem, stop weeping for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For behold, the days are coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed.’ Then they will begin to say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us,’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us.’ For if they do these things in the green tree, what will happen in the dry?” (Luke 23:28-31)
However, when Jesus gets to Golgotha, He is not talking anymore. There are no words; there are no thoughts; there is only a long period of silence. Why? Jesus’ mind must be numb—just think about what Jesus, the Man, has gone through: He is literally numb.
What Jesus
does not know is that for the first time in His life, He is about to cry out
[to His Father] for help, but He will not get any.
Presented In The Gospels:
It is recorded that Jesus says seven things on the Cross, as follows:
Note: Think of the Gospels—
“My God, My God, Why have You forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27:47)
and at the end—
“It is finished!” (John 19:30)
as being the tip of an iceberg; and Isaiah and Psalms as being the bottom of the iceberg.
Remarkably, we find in Isaiah and Psalms, the thoughts behind those things that Jesus is saying.
Note: Psalm 22 is called A Psalm of David. Actually, it is a psalm written by David, but it is certainly not about him. Psalm 22 pictures a man who is caught in the hand of his enemies and who is tortured and beaten; however, David was never caught by his enemies. It also pictures a man who dies a violent death at the hands of his enemies, but David died an old man, comfortably in his own bed. This is another instance where an Old Testament saint wrote something and then asked Holy Spirit About what am I writing? Holy Spirit said You are writing for the benefit of those who come later.
So, Thank you David because here we have Jesus’ thoughts as He hung on the Cross:
1 My God, My God, Why have You forsaken Me?
In Aramaic, Jesus says Eloi, Eloi, which is the equivalent of the Hebrew Elohim, Elohim. There were three ways in which the Hebrews said God, as follows:
However, Jesus calls God Eloi, Eloi; He does not call
Him Yahweh, Yahweh – Father, Father. Why not? Because the
Father-Son relationship is broken, and at that moment, Jesus is not His Son,
and God is not Jesus’ Father. Why
not? Because
Jesus is cursed—legally, He was the worst sinner of all time, because He had
more sin on Him than any person who has ever lived—and God cannot have a Son
who is cursed.
Do You See What Happened? As the Cross is lowered into that hole, Jesus’ body is jarred, He is shocked, and He cries out to His Father. What does Jesus hear? Nothing. God the Father has turned His back on Jesus; He has forsaken Him. And thank God that He did, because the reason the Father forsook Jesus was that our sin was on Jesus. If the Father had continued to accept Jesus, then that would have meant our sins were not [really] put on Jesus.
It is not a cry of bitterness—Jesus
does not understand why God the Father does not answer Him. Why else would He have asked Why have You forsaken Me? In
Jesus’ human condition—a weakened condition where He is numb and His thinking
is not clear at all—He does not know why God does not answer Him. He is shocked. Why? Jesus knew
that the sin would cause a separation, but He really did not realize that when
He prayed, His Father would not answer.
Now it is worse;
Jesus knows that no answer is coming.
And He says:
Far from My
deliverance are the words of My groaning.
Meaning I am going
to groan here as long as I want, because I know My deliverance is not here.
Picture: Sometimes when we
pray, we feel there is no answer; however, we expect there will be one at some
point. We know there are silences; we
know there are delays; and we fully expect there is a time in which God will
answer us. Or, if there is a silence,
we might say Maybe the Lord is
speaking, but I am not hearing. This is not the case of Jesus; He
knows there is no answer coming and that is why He is groaning.
Note: There
is no groaning from the other two people who were hanged there on crosses; in
fact, one of them is being sarcastic to Jesus Are You not the Christ? Save
Yourself and us! (Luke 23:39) But Jesus is groaning and moaning. Why?
Not because of the physical torture—which was horrible beyond our imaginings—but
because of the spiritual separation from His Father that is unbearable to
Jesus.
2 O My God, I cry by day, but You do not
answer;
For three hours,
Jesus hung on the Cross at midday—from 9:00 A.M. to 12:00 noon—with the sun
shining directly on Him. Jesus’ thirst
would have been unbearable, not to mention His many other physical agonies.
Presented In The Gospels:
For three hours,
Jesus is in daylight and then what happens?
Darkness comes upon that part of the world:
And when the sixth hour had come, darkness fell over the whole land
until the ninth hour. (Mark
15:33)
The loss of
fellowship between the Father and Son affects all of creation, causing the sun
to go dark. And let us not forget: it is our
sin that did that!
A
Question To Ask: Pagan writers try to explain away this
darkness, which was a miracle, as an eclipse.
Why do you think they try to explain it away?
Jesus is thinking:
And by night, but
I have no rest.
In His weakened
state, Jesus does not understand that a miracle is happening; in His mind It is night.
At this point:
Jesus is struggling
in His weakened condition: He gets some glimpses of insight; He is in and out;
He is still struggling to understand why His Father does not answer Him.
The answer to His
question—Why did You forsake Me?—is in the next verse.
3 Yet You are holy, O You who are enthroned
upon the praises of Israel.
4 In You our fathers trusted; They trusted and
You delivered them.
5 To You they cried out and were delivered; In
You they trusted and were not disappointed.
Jesus is looking at
history—remember, there is no relationship, so He is relying only on His
memory—and He is asking What about
Your children in the wilderness? What
about all of the centuries when You guided them, they kept falling into
horrible sin, but when they cried out to You, You rescued them?
Looking
Back To Israel: In the book of Exodus, the sons of Israel
were in Egypt, they were living in horrible sin, and every time they cried out,
God rescued them. Also, in the book of
Judges, Israel kept lapsing into sin, and every time they did, they would cry
out for help, and God would deliver them.
Did God wait for them to get better first? No!
The Point Jesus Is Making: Why did You rescue them—sinners—however, I did not do anything wrong, but when I cry out, You do not answer Me?
Then Jesus realizes why:
6 But I am a worm and not a man, A reproach of men and despised by the people.
Jesus is sensing that He is a worm—the lowest of the low (the worst)—because He has no communication with His Father anymore, He has sin on Him that He cannot understand, and He feels different than He ever has. Again, let me make it clear: He is the lowest of the low because He willingly took the sins of the world on Himself.
Jesus is thinking that God kept helping the Israelites just because they were His own. He is thinking back to Israel One of the characteristics of God is that He just helps people. You answered their prayers, but not mind—I am subhuman.
Note: Human beings were created to be in an exalted state; in fact, as far as closeness to God and love and tenderness with God, we are a little bit above the angels. After the Fall, the status of human beings fell and we became orphans. At the funeral of Lazarus, Jesus cried because He saw what the exalted state of the human race had become: death – despair – sorrow – crying – grief:
People are worms spiritually!
Next: Hidden
Life #12) JESUS SUFFERS THE FULL PENALTY
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