We’re gathered here in the midst of a multitude of fellow saints. We are gathered in, rather than scattered; assembled together, rather than cast out. This fellowship with God and each other is ours because the Son of God was forsaken. Although your sin earned desertion, outer darkness, and utter forsakenness, instead it pleased the Father to crush His Son.
He did this so you could be joined together with an innumerable company of saints and angels, and be received into the bright beams of God’s pleasure. As we reflect this evening on Christ’s death, and His cry of holy despair “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?â€, remember that it was all done so that you might not be forsaken.
How sweet and awful is this night? Sweet because our sins are washed away, awful because we see the great horror of our sin and the sacrifice greater than our sin which purchased our pardon. By the Spirit, the cross is held forth to us, that we might savor the glory revealed in the horror. God gathers us who were once far off, and brings us and our fellow saints, into the infinite joy of His Triune being.