Jesus always and only desired to do God’s will and please His Father. At critical points during the Lord’s earthly ministry, the Voice of Love spoke through the clouds to not only herald Christ’s glory but also empower Jesus onward in what would prove to be a dangerous and costly soul-saving mission.
The pivot from carpenter to Teacher began in earnest at the Lord’s baptism; Jesus emerged from the water, and a voice from heaven proclaimed, “You are My Son, whom I love; with You I am well pleased.”1
Later at His mysterious transfiguration, when the Teacher learned more of His work as Savior, the cloud appeared and announced that Jesus, heaven’s beloved Son, had been chosen. “Listen to Him!”2
These sounds of blessedness from beyond are soul-stirring to us as believers, who witness them through the divine language of the gospels and experience providence unfolding and overcoming peril – but imagine them for Jesus, the man with a divine mission, in the moment. The wonder of His work is that Jesus was tempted to fear and doubt just as we are, but He made it to the Cross because His every step in faith perfectly shed His humanness for heavenliness.
Perhaps His Father’s voice, pouring down upon Him like rain from the cloud, was the affirmation and refreshment Jesus needed to keep going.
When Jesus arrived in Jerusalem, just days before His crucifixion, people blessed Jesus with palm branches and shouts of praise and worship for the arrival of their King. Soon, Jesus stood among the crowd and taught them about the means of His Kingdom.3
“Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies it produces many seeds,” Jesus said. And He admitted His soul was troubled. These supernatural sensations became more frequent as He got closer to fulfilling His purpose, clues foreshadowing the darkness and distance from His Father that would soon overtake the Lord Jesus.
“And what shall I say? ‘Father save Me from this hour?’ No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify Your name!”
God seemed to recognize His Son’s trouble and thundered a promise: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.”
Jesus existed at the center of a concentric circle; His dearest apostles were the closest, extending to the larger group of disciples, and then the Lord’s followers and believers. But despite the proximity and crowds, Jesus lived in existential aloneness – did Jesus really have any peers?
When it was time to decide where to teach next, or who to send out next, Jesus looked to His right and left and there was no counsel; His haven and comfort were the quiet places of prayer where He enjoyed sweet communion with His Father.
Immediately before Jesus called Lazarus out of the tomb, Jesus described the confidence He had in His Father’s connection, “I knew that You always hear Me.”4
Now hear the longing, as Mark’s gospel reports Jesus crying from the Cross: “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?”
He’s calling out Psalm 22, which continues “Why are You so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish?”
The agony and anguish that Jesus bore, that crushed Him in the garden to the point of sweating blood, was the weight of our sin and shame, which Jesus carried to crucify and wash away on the Cross, yet the interior torture was likely God’s silence, for He has no part with sin.
Jesus relentlessly went about doing what His Father sent Him to do. Fulfilling His purpose was Jesus’ only hope of getting back to His Father.
By now, we know the rest of the story, yet the gospels still offer a glimpse of how the heavens did roar in the moment, as God’s only Son hung in unusual glory.5
Darkness covered the land. The noonday sky turned to night.
“For the sun stopped shining,” until the prodigal Son of Justice could rise and return home.
