Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?

In my Sunday School this week, we watched a video of a speaker named Voddie Baucham. I think it's the best Sunday School I've had in a long time. Baucham is a good speaker: humorous, eloquent, concise. He spoke on why the question, "Why do you believe the Bible to be true?" was the most important question a Christian could answer, as it is the basis for everything we believe. His answer, which I totally agreed with, that the Bible is an accurate historical document written by 40 eyewitnesses during the lifetime of other eye witnesses in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek on the Africa, Asian, and European continents over the course of 1500 years, is not the point I want to make today. (And, by the way, he said it much more eloquently and concisely.)

During the course of his sermon he mentioned the fact that Jesus made this statement on the cross: Eli, eli, lema sabachthani? Which is Aramaic, and translated into English, means My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Now, over the course of many years I have always heard about how God had to turn His back on Christ, His Son, His own Person, because Christ took our sins upon him in the moment of his crucifixion and God could not be with sin because of His righteous nature. (Hence, our predicament.) But Mr. Baucham brought up something else that I had never put together before, and subsequently left me with a funny expression: the cross between a grin and a hanging mouth.

Mr. Baucham pointed out that chapters and verses in Scripture are only a recent invention: since the Reformation period, or perhaps later (I can't remember the exact time). So, during Christ's lifetime, and pretty much any time before chapters and verses, people referred to a passage by the beginning verse in the passage. He then went on to point out that the words, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me," are the beginning to Psalm 22. The very psalm many refer to as the crucifixion psalm.

In this psalm, written by King David hundreds of years before Christ, before Romans, before crucifixion, David writes of an event he would have known little about. The psalm details the events of Christ crucifixion in startling fashion (at least for those who are skeptical of prophecy). It describes a man delivered to his enemies to be mocked, surrounded by Gentiles and enemies, being poured out like water, his heart melting within him (Christ's heart likely burst during the crucifixion and killed him b/c separated blood and water flowed out when they pierced his side); he thirsts, they divide his garments, his hands and feet are pierced, he can count his bones (they did not break Christ's bones on the cross, unlike the others), and so on. It's actually quite detailed, and fulfilled in the Gospel accounts.

Christ refers to the opening lines of this psalm upon the cross. The Jews among the bystanders, especially males who had been educated under the rabbinical system, would have known that this is the opening line to this psalm. And they should have realized that it was being fulfilled in their midsts.

This is not the first time Christ proclaimed Scripture fulfilled in His Person in the midst of the Jews. In Nazareth, Christ read Isaiah 61:1-2 to the Jews gathered at the synagogue and proclaimed if fulfilled in their midst (Luke 4:16-30). I had never considered it before, had never put it together before, but Christ was still pointing those who would hear them to the truth of His purpose: that He had come to fulfill the Law and the Prophets, not abolish them (Matthew 5:17).