Morning and Evening with Charles Spurgeon

“My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” — Psalm 22:1

We here behold the Saviour in the depth of His sorrows. No other place so well shows the griefs of Christ as Calvary, and no other moment at Calvary is so full of agony as that in which His cry rends the air — ”My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” At this moment physical weakness was united with acute mental torture from the shame and ignominy through which He had to pass; and to make His grief culminate with emphasis, He suffered spiritual agony surpassing all expression, resulting from the departure of His Father’s presence. This was the black midnight of His horror; then it was that He descended the abyss of suffering. No man can enter into the full meaning of these words. Some of us think at times that we could cry, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” There are seasons when…

the brightness of our Father’s smile
is eclipsed by clouds and darkness; but let us remember that God never
does really forsake us. It is only a seeming forsaking with us, but in
Christ’s case it was a real forsaking. We grieve at a little withdrawal of our
Father’s love; but the real turning away of God’s face from His Son, who
shall calculate how deep the agony which it caused Him?

In our case, our cry is often dictated by unbelief: in His case, it was the
utterance of a dreadful fact, for God had really turned away from Him for a
season. O thou poor, distressed soul, who once lived in the sunshine of
God’s face, but art now in darkness, remember that He has not really
forsaken thee. God in the clouds is as much our God as when He shines
forth in all the lustre of His grace; but since even the thought that He has
forsaken us gives us agony, what must the woe of the Saviour have been
when He exclaimed, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?”

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Producer: Todd Adkins
Voice Artist: Ian Cullen