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Speaker 1: Life Audio. Thank you for listening to your Daily Bible Verse,

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Speaker 1: the podcast that examines one verse each day to learn

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Speaker 1: more about God and his will for our lives. I'm

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Speaker 1: your host, Kyle Norman. After a brief message from one

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Speaker 1: of our sponsors, we will continue with our God Meets

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Speaker 1: You in the Wilderness series with a discussion of today's verse.

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Speaker 1: Today's verse can be found in Psalm twenty two, Verse one,

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Speaker 1: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why

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Speaker 1: are you so far from saving me? So far from

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Speaker 1: the words of my grown Stick a moment and just

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Speaker 1: sit at this scene. Jesus hangs on the cross. There

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Speaker 1: is an inscription above him that reads the King of

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Speaker 1: the Jews, which, coming from Pontous Pilot, was a statement

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Speaker 1: of mockery, not majesty. Clouds fill the sky, and as

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Speaker 1: Jesus hangs there, bleeding from his hands and feet, the

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Speaker 1: very people that he came to save yell insults at him.

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Speaker 1: Top everything off on that cross, Jesus felt like God

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Speaker 1: the Father had abandoned him. With the very last vestiges

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Speaker 1: of his strength, he raises his voice in a cry

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Speaker 1: of desperation and agony. My God, my God, why have

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Speaker 1: you forsaken me. Everything about the cross screams defeat. Jesus

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Speaker 1: dies on the cross, inflicted with outward and inward wounding.

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Speaker 1: Now too often we rush past this, moving as quickly

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Speaker 1: as we can to the empty tomb. But if we

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Speaker 1: would just stop here, we might uncover a truth that

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Speaker 1: we so often need in our lives. The fact that

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Speaker 1: Jesus felt abandoned and alone is actually good news for us.

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Speaker 1: The fact that he cried out in the deepest agony

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Speaker 1: that one can imagine means that we can be confident

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Speaker 1: that He's there for us when we find ourselves in

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Speaker 1: the same place. This divine identification with the suffering of

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Speaker 1: humanity should not be glossed over, because from here comes

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Speaker 1: the very grace of God that sustains us. After all,

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Speaker 1: hasn't there ever been times in your life where you

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Speaker 1: feel that you've been abandoned by God? Have you ever

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Speaker 1: been tempted to cry out, my God, My God, why

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Speaker 1: have you forsaken me? The Cross is a place of

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Speaker 1: salvation for us, precisely because in the crucified Lord we

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Speaker 1: find ourselves. Jesus takes up our sorrows and our sins

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Speaker 1: and our Christ. In the fourth century, there was a

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Speaker 1: theological heresy known as a pullinarianism. Now, this stated that

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Speaker 1: Jesus had a human body, but not a human mind

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Speaker 1: or soul. So the idea was that on the cross,

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Speaker 1: Jesus was physically crucified, but his divine self remained unaffected,

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Speaker 1: so crying out in agony, quoting Psalm twenty two, Well,

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Speaker 1: this was mere theatrics. Jesus, it put forward, didn't actually

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Speaker 1: feel the agony of the cross or the weight of

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Speaker 1: the cross. Jesus didn't feel the sting of sin. He

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Speaker 1: didn't feel the absence of God. He didn't feel this

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Speaker 1: soul deep agony in any sort of way. And in

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Speaker 1: response to this heresy, the church father Gregory of Naziatis

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Speaker 1: said that which remains unassumed remains unhealed. Now by that

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Speaker 1: he meant that anything that is not taken up by

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Speaker 1: jesus incarnation remains separated from his salation. If we can't

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Speaker 1: see ourselves in the cross, then we can't see ourselves

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Speaker 1: in the empty tomb. Now, even if we can't name

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Speaker 1: every fault, every sin, or every mistake, we can believe

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Speaker 1: that our sins are bound up in jesus crucifixion and

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Speaker 1: This means that our cries are awful found up in

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Speaker 1: his When Jesus praise his most visceral and gut wrenching

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Speaker 1: of prayers, our cries of heartbreak, suffering in agony, they

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Speaker 1: are included. Jesus takes those feelings and includes them in

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Speaker 1: his declaration, My God, My God, why are you so

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Speaker 1: far from saving me? And here we find the good news. See,

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Speaker 1: when Jesus echoes this lamon, he isn't just crying out

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Speaker 1: in agony. He is also pointing to the redemptive story

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Speaker 1: that he is bringing to fruition that if you were

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Speaker 1: to open your bibles and go forward through Psalm twenty two,

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Speaker 1: you would uncover an important truth. Despite feeling abandoned and alone,

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Speaker 1: the suffering one in Psalm twenty two is never despised

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Speaker 1: by God. The psalm goes on to say that God

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Speaker 1: has not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one.

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Speaker 1: He has not hidden his face from him, but he

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Speaker 1: has listened to his cry. And Psalm twenty two the

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Speaker 1: place of suffering becomes transformed into the place where God's

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Speaker 1: love and God's power are revealed. And that's what we

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Speaker 1: see in the cross. The cross is ultimately the place

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Speaker 1: of God's greatest act of grace, and this means that

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Speaker 1: God is there with us in the midst of our cries.

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Speaker 1: God meets us in the wilderness experience of our lives. Now,

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Speaker 1: we might feel aed and forsaken, and we might at

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Speaker 1: times feel alone, but we can recognize that Jesus was

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Speaker 1: also incarnate in those places. Jesus felt alone, Jesus felt forsaken,

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Speaker 1: Jesus felt abandoned, just as we do. And this truth

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Speaker 1: gives us the allowance to scream and to cry from

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Speaker 1: that place. Even there, we are surrounded by the loving

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Speaker 1: mercy of God. And when we have difficulty remembering this,

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Speaker 1: all we need to do is look at Jesus hanging

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Speaker 1: on the cross. We simply need to hear him pray,

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Speaker 1: my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And

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Speaker 1: we can know that He is with us,