He Has Done It - Part Three · The Disciple Machine

He Has Done It - Part Three

by Pastor Joseph Cortes

He Hath Not Hid His Face From Him

There is another reason I believe we should be careful about saying that the Father abandoned Jesus upon the cross. We should keep reading Psalm 22. People often stop at the opening line, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” But the Psalm does not stop there. Psalm 22:24 says, “For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; neither hath he hid his face from him; but when he cried unto him, he heard.” Those words are extremely important. The very Psalm Jesus quoted eventually says that God had not hidden His face from the afflicted One and that when He cried, God heard Him.

Psalm 16 gives another remarkable prophecy concerning Christ. Verse 10 says, “For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.” The cross was horrible. The suffering was real. The rejection was real. The nails were real. The blood was real. The pain was real. Death was real. But God’s plan was not defeated. The Father had not forgotten His Son. Heaven was not watching helplessly while everything spiraled out of control. The cross was part of the plan, and Jesus knew exactly where that plan was leading.

There is something deeply comforting about seeing the cross this way. Even in His suffering, Jesus was pointing people back to the Word of God. He was telling them to remember what Moses wrote, remember what David wrote, remember what Isaiah wrote, remember what Zechariah wrote, and remember what God had promised. The cross was not proof that God’s promises had failed. The cross was proof that God’s promises were being fulfilled.

Imagine those who loved Jesus standing nearby. Everything they had hoped for must have seemed shattered. They believed He was the Messiah. They watched Him heal the sick. They heard Him teach. Some had seen Him raise the dead. They believed He was the One who was to come, and now He was hanging upon a Roman cross. From the human point of view, it looked like defeat. But Scripture tells us the story from God’s point of view. The cross was not defeat. It was accomplishment. The cross was not the end of the promise. It was the fulfillment of the promise.

Sometimes God’s plan does not look like God’s plan when we are standing in the middle of it. Those standing at the cross saw blood, but God saw redemption. They saw humiliation, but God saw prophecy fulfilled. They saw apparent defeat, but God saw salvation being accomplished. They saw a tomb approaching, but God saw resurrection morning. That is why we must learn to view circumstances through the Word of God rather than judging the Word of God through our circumstances. If those standing at Calvary had looked only at what their eyes could see, they might have concluded that everything was finished in the worst possible way. But if they remembered the Scriptures, they would discover that everything was being finished in the greatest possible way.

Jesus pointed them toward Psalm 22, and Psalm 22 did not end in despair. It ended in victory.

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He Has Done It - Part Three