PREVIOUS SERMON  (sorted accordingly,starting from recent )

We have been saying over the past few weeks that out of the many things that endear Christ to His Church, one of the chief reasons must be that He has worn our flesh, measured its frailty and experienced exactly how we feel wearing flesh in virtually all situations and circumstances. Our Lord is a wounded healer; His ability to heal our wounds flows from the fact that He has known our wounds and suffered them Himself. Lord Jesus has taken the entire range of our situation with Him into His Godhead so that now our Creator feels as we feel under sincere conditions. What a mystery! A mystery that we can only know and understand when we are ushered into eternity where everything shall be laid bare for all to see how they really are, different from our earthly wrong speculations and imaginations born out of our limited knowledge and understanding of true divine things that often mislead and ruin us when we hinge our decisions and actions on them. It is important now to note that the way Lord Jesus responded to the wounds He received compared to the way, generally speaking, we respond to our wounds are both quite different. When we are wounded our natural response is either to nurse our hurt in an attitude of self-pity, or flare up in unrighteous anger seeking who to blame. Comb the record of our Lord Jesus’ days on this earth and you will not find one ounce of self-pity or looking for whom to blame. When the daughters of Jerusalem wept over Him on His way to the cross, but Lord Jesus, turning toward them, said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children” as seen in Luke 23:28; no self-pity and no blaming of anybody. This is how we are to bear with our sin caused troubles and difficulties knowing that we are responsible for all our predicaments. Our Lord Jesus supposed to blame us because it is our sins consequences that He suffered yet He did not. Neither did He harbour unforgiveness. When men laid His weary body upon a cross and transfixed Him to the wood with nails, the cry that rose from His heart was not for justice, but forgiveness: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” as seen in Luke 23:34. That was the most sublime prayer that was ever prayed, for it embodied the most sublime spirit ever shown towards a wicked person acting as an enemy. The cross shows us how Lord Jesus dealt with hate different from the way we are all dealing with hate. He held it to Him and quelled it in His mighty heart of love. Did you get that, quelling the furry that often arises with hate in His Mighty Heart, containing it from getting out of control; which is exactly what is expected of us when really we are truly converted to become Christly. The boomerang lost its power because the venom which flew towards Him at the crucifixion did not fly back again in revenge. He freely forgave those who hurt Him –so must we. Here is a big lesson for all to learn because if that boomerang caused by their unlawful handling, treating and punishing Him for committing no sin had not lost its power due to that loving prayer that He uttered to God Almighty; ‘ebelebe garu egbu’ everyone involved in that unlawful crucifixion of God Himself who came to save man from extinction on earth would have definitely being wiped out from the surface of the earth instantly. It is this lawful boomerang that people often call the law of karma. This is also the same reason why God warned saying, touch not my anointed and do my prophets no harm!

But remember that this is the psalm of David which he uttered to God many years before the advent of the Lord God Almighty is what the Lord Himself is uttering now, do you see the essence of giving back God’s word to Him? Today we look in detail at an issue which I touched on a few days ago –‘the cry of dereliction’. The phrase is used by theologians to describe the feelings of abandonment which our Lord Jesus Christ appeared to have had when He cried out from the cross: ‘My God, my God, why have You forsaken me? Why are You so far from helping me, and from the words of my groaning?’ Dereliction is the state of having the feelings of been abandoned and become dilapidated. Throughout the history of the Church, great debates have taken place on this matter of Jesus’ cry of dereliction. Some believe He was not actually abandoned by God but felt abandoned, while others take the view that it was much more than a feeling and that on the cross He actually was forsaken by God. I find myself in agreement with the latter of these beliefs. R.W. Dale, in his book ‘The atonement, convinced me of this when he wrote, ‘I decline to accept any explanation of these words which implies that they do not represent the actual truth of our Lord’s position. I cannot believe that Lord Jesus Christ was uttering a false cry’. The most important thing about the Lord Jesus is that you have to bear in mind that all of what He demonstrated is and was to teach mankind the realities of life on earth. Just imagine it –our Lord Jesus, who had been forsaken by men was now being forsaken by God which goes to let us know how heinous sin is to God, how God forbids sin even to the point that He does not like to behold it, which is why He turns His face away from it and from whosoever that bears it. As Lord Jesus began to experience in His soul the suffering of sin (not from His own sin, but ours) and proceeded through His sufferings to pay the terrifying debt that sin had built up in man and the entire universe, God wants us to feel this suffering caused by sin in our soul too and allow it’s reality to give us a sense of hate to sin and call up in us a decision to begin making efforts to run away from sin and the act of sinning knowing that every sin we commit has a suffering it will bring home to us and a terrifying dept of sin that we must pay unless the Lord God pays that dept for us. God, who could have nothing to do with sin, had to turn His back on Lord Jesus when He bore our sin. Lord Jesus plunged into the darkness of sin as soon as God turned His back and endured the awful suffering of the atonement entirely on His own. So He experienced on the cross not just a felt, but a real abandonment -something those who are Christians will never experience. Let this solemn but glorious truth take hold of you today –because He was abandoned, you will never be abandoned. Sin has a suffering it brings home and a terrifying dept that must be paid! Lord Jesus paid that dept and went through the suffering which is why if you believe in Him and follow the examples of living life on earth, you will be saved from the suffering of sin and the dept payment that is due sin.

Can you imagine this truth that God Himself wants us to know by our self what is good, what is acceptable in terms of standard and what is perfect will of God in terms of divine requirement? We have learnt some time ago how faulty physical functioning can affect our spiritual condition and bring about the feeling that God is not interested in us or is far away; whereas the fault is created by us, which is why Igbos will say: ‘ihe n’eme anyi si anyi na aka’. This feeling can also be brought about through psychological malfunctioning such as having a faulty concept, of God, unrealistic expectations, perfectionist standards, irrational fears, mediocrity and so on. In fact, J.B. Philips (to whom we referred earlier on) kept a diary of the thoughts that went through his head day by day, and found on reflection that they were almost all filled with negativism and gloom. What about you? Are your thoughts and ideas filled with negative imaginations or do you think positively not by hypocrisy but thinking ideally and realistically making sure that whatsoever you plan, decide, acts upon or do you hinge on the ideals and realities of the Lord God Almighty according to His Word in both the Scripture and the gospel. Everything about man is all faulty, this is why it is only the Lord God who by His Spirit can lead and guide us aright in life which is why we are to follow Him. Here is a list of those thoughts taken directly from his diary which, as you see, some across as rambling and confused. ‘Seems I cannot get rid of colossal fantastic demands’, ‘have discovered my own limitations but still feel the demand to give 130 per cent’. ‘Rather die than be ordinary’. The centre of my worship and my energies is –I’ll show them’, The God I have been looking for is not a grown up God at all’. ‘I want to be colossal or soon die’. ‘If I left the world a great light would go out’. Nearly all that I call God is my father magnified’. Is it any wonder then, with thoughts like those buzzing around in his head, that God seemed to be far away? When the feeling of being abandoned by God comes mainly from the thoughts in our head, then good Christian counselling can show you how to deal with them. Take my advice, if you cannot solve this problem yourself, discuss the issue with a mature Christian friend; remember that I said a mature Christian friend, I did not say with one that claims to be a mature Christian. People claim things today, not that they are in reality, so be very careful when dealing with people!

Just as we said last week, all men to whom is entrusted the care of souls are familiar with people who feel forsaken by the Lord at the time of their greatest need and desire. When I first entered the Christian ministry, I remember being deeply perplexed by the fact that, from time to time, I would meet good and sincere Christians who told me they felt deserted by God at the time they needed Him most. I remember working in the church one day in company with a well-known evangelist, a man greatly used of God, who confessed to me that he felt that God had abandoned him. His confession shook me to the depth of my spiritual foundations. I wondered how it could be that a man so close to God could feel forsaken by Him. But when I remember reading in the gospel of the Lord saying the same, I come to realize that so it is with men to whom is entrusted with the care of souls! I have not gone through an experience like that myself, but I have known hundreds who have. J.B. Philips, best known for his translation of the epistles into modern English, Letters to Young Churches, which he subsequently extended to a translation of the whole New Testament, went through such an experience. His wife Vera, and a close friend Edwin Robertson, compiled a selection of letters he wrote which reveal the pain he underwent as he passed through what theologians call ‘the dark night of the soul’. Dr Leslie Weatherhead, previously minister of the City Temple, London, tells of a similar experience also. In a letter to J.B. Philips, he said, ‘I felt concerned about what you describe ...because I went through the same hell thirty years ago.’ Teresa of Avila knew the experience too. In fact, Christian history is filled with the record of men and women who went through ‘the dark night of the soul’. It happens to the choicest saints – something you ought to struggle to remember should it ever happen to you. With this in mind it means that if God is really using you for service unto humanity, there comes a time in your life when everything you are building will seem to be collapsing bringing it to what is known as the darkest night of your soul.

Now tell me if there is any human being that can give you this kind of assurance in life if not only the Lord God Almighty; the Creator Himself who alone has the power and authority to control His created things such that glorious providence and afflicted providence all come to us only with His permission. I want us to focus our attention on a feeling which Christ experienced that I hope we will never know, but which nevertheless we may encounter at some point in our own life. I have in mind the Lord Jesus experience of feeling abandoned and forsaken by God when issues of life seem to have over whelmed Him. Perhaps no feeling is as intolerable and disabling as that of feeling deserted by God. But even this seemingly darkest of dark hours our Lord knows; it did not come to Him unaware or by surprise. His piteous cry of dereliction on the cross makes Him kin to all those who feel themselves deserted by the Almighty, and of course His glorious resurrection (we must not forget that) proves beyond all cavil that Behind the dim unknown Standeth God within the shadow Keeping watch above His own. James Russel Lowell (1819-1891) Dereliction means the state of having been abandoned and become dilapidated or the feel of one’s shameful failure to fulfil one’s obligations. All men to whom is entrusted the care of souls are familiar with fine Christian people who, at times, feel their prayers go unheeded, unanswered or who pray for something that seems of certainty to be within the will of God and yet find the ‘heavens as brass’, and thus are tempted to believe that God has forgotten or abandoned them. It must be made clear right at the outset, however, that although a Christian may feel abandoned by God, the feeling is the result of illusion, or one’s imagination and not reality. We are never really abandoned by God in the real sense of it, even though we may feel abandoned. He could no more abandon one of His blood-washed children than He could tell a lie! Let this obvious fact always be in the mind of a true child of the living Lord God Almighty!