31st Day of Lent
Beloved. Tonight’s reading takes us to the events of Jesus’ crucifixion. We read that it was about the third hour—so according to Jewish reckoning, it was about 9 AM. At first they offer Jesus wine mixed with myrrh to help make the prisoner easier to control and perhaps as narcotic to help with the pain, but Jesus refused that; He willingly laid down His life and He would endure every bit of pain and suffering. St. Mark records: With Him they also crucified two robbers, one on His right and the other on His left. As we hear that the soldiers gambled for Jesus’ clothes by throwing dice for them, it means that Jesus was probably naked on the cross—all to add to His shame. And then came throughout the six hours of the cross the constant mocking and ridiculing of Jesus by those passing by and by the religious leaders who finally got what they wanted—they thought—the death of Jesus. They thought they were merely adding insult to injury as they mocked Jesus. But they were really the instruments of the devil to tempt Jesus in one final, last ditch attempt to get Jesus off the path of suffering on the cross by which He would die for the sins of the world and so reconcile us sinners to the holy God. Listen to what the crowds were saying and taunting Jesus with [Mt. 27.40]: If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross! Notice the devil behind those words. He is there trying to cast doubt; He is there trying to get Jesus to prove who He is in some other way than by the cross, than by suffering and dying. That’s the same thing he tried earlier in those 3 types of temptations early in His ministry that Jesus refused: If You are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread….If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down [from the top of the temple]… And now: If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross!
What great physical agony but also what great and severe temptation that Jesus is enduring. Who can even begin to fathom the depth of what our Lord Jesus endured on the cross? –Physically, mentally and spiritually. But in the midst of this suffering and temptation, what do we see Jesus doing? He is taking it/ enduring it all—for us and for our salvation! And not only that, but precisely in the midst of all this, we see His holy heart and will as these hours of suffering are punctuated by the seven words He speaks from the cross. First He prays as they crucify Him: Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing. Then later to the repentant thief He says: Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in paradise. And then we see His love and care of His mother as He entrusts her care to St. John: Woman, here is your son!... Here is your mother!
But then we begin to see something different. It is about noon time and it got dark and stayed dark until 3 in the afternoon. St. Mark records: Now when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” which is translated, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Here from noon until three, Jesus is suffering the very pangs of hell as vial after vial of God’s wrath is being poured out on Him for the sin of the world. Here the One who was made sin for us, who became the world’s sinner, the Lamb of God loaded down with the sins of the world, was suffering the wrath and punishment of God for our sin. Certainly that suffering and torment began in Gethsemane but here it reaches its height as Jesus—the holy, sinless, God-man—is being forsaken by God Himself. And that being forsaken by God is nothing but hell itself. So important, so vital is this moment that the Lord prophesied it in exact detail, described the great suffering of Jesus—but also His ultimate triumph—in Psalm 22. And by saying from the cross “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” not only does Jesus bring this psalm to people’s minds but He is pointing out the fact that this prophecy is at that moment being fulfilled.
So, yes, here is Jesus in greatest agony and suffering—all to suffer and die for our sins and reconcile us to God, to open the kingdom of heaven to us, to bring us the forgiveness of sins and eternal life—and what is sinful man doing? Our text: Some of those who stood by, when they heard it—Jesus crying out suffering the very pangs of hell, suffering the forsakenness of God, drinking to the bitter dregs the cup of suffering for the salvation of the world—said, “Look, He is calling for Elijah!” This was said in greatest ridicule. So when the Savior drinks the bitter cup of agony, sinful man ridicules Him. There were a couple ideas floating around those days that the people had. One idea that some people evidently held to was that the OT prophet Elijah would come at times of critical need to protect the innocent and rescue the righteous. So here is that great mocking of Jesus as He is suffering for the sin of the world—even for this sin by His mockers. They are mocking Him by saying in effect: If Jesus is really who He says He is, if indeed He is innocent and righteous, then the prophet Elijah will come and rescue Him. They were saying by this that Jesus was calling on the prophet Elijah to come out of heaven, to appear and to declare that Jesus is the Messiah in spite of the evidence to the contrary. And really who could deny it? There on the cross was Jesus—obviously rejected by the religious leaders, by the crowds, by the worldly authorities, and by God Himself—as Jesus’ very words declare: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” The mockers were saying, “Let’s just sit back and watch: will this Jesus’ claims be vindicated by Elijah swooping down to save Him?” Not much different from the ridicule: If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross!
This ridicule may also have been a nervous sort of ridicule, like a nervous laughter. Remember the scene: for three hours there was this eerie darkness that covered the land—at a time the sun should have been highest and brightest. It was impossible for it to have been an eclipse or some other seeming phenomenon. It seemed like this was the precursor, the ushering in of the great and terrible day of judgment; and they were reminded of that final prophecy of the OT [Ml 4.5]: Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. Jesus had already said this prophecy was fulfilled in St. John the Baptizer [Mt 11.14]. But here, with that ominous darkness, with that prophecy of God’s coming in judgment, they felt the judgment of God and so, in their rejection and mocking of Jesus, to “lighten the mood” they ridiculed Jesus by calling on Elijah to come to usher in that great and dreadful day of the Lord.
This is always the case—our Lord and His word is not only not understood but people do not want to understand it. Jesus very clearly tells exactly what is going on by referring the bystanders to that psalm that prophesies the suffering of the Savior in exact detail, even His words: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” They willingly do not want to understand it. Yes, they knew the psalm/ prophecy from the temple and synagogues. But what? They rejected the very notion that Jesus could be/ is the Savior. And so, by rejecting the work of the Holy Spirit and so by rejecting Jesus and His word and work all of Scripture is a closed book. St. Paul tells us that without the Holy Spirit and His work, man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned[1 Cor 2.14]. As Jesus is greatly suffering, drinking the most bitter dregs of His cup of suffering for the salvation of the world, He is being rejected and mocked.
We see the same thing today: people knowingly and willingly reject the work of the Holy Spirit. They do not know Jesus and do not want to know Him. They don’t want any other god or king than their own feelings and desires. And like we see with the bystanders here as they are standing in the midst of an eerie darkness, they laugh nervously—so also today, the unbeliever with no real certainty of anything, with the deepest human longing which is for God and eternity left unfulfilled, they stand by nervously laughing at the holy Christian faith and our Lord’s dear Christian.
Our text: Some of those who stood by, when they heard it, said, “Look, He is calling for Elijah!” Then someone ran and filled a sponge full of sour wine, put it on a reed, and offered it to [Jesus] to drink, saying, “Let Him alone; let us see if Elijah will come to take Him down.” Dear Christian, this was part of Jesus’ temptation even on the cross and part of His suffering, dying for those very sins as they were being committed against Him: to be ridiculed by those very people He is dying for. Dear Christian, there are couple things for us to keep in mind here. Let us take a close look at ourselves and our lives these waning days of Lent and let us strive all the more to recognize and root out sin from our hearts and lives—even and especially sin that we wink at or tell ourselves is no big deal. That, too, is sin that Jesus had to suffer and die for. Let us take seriously our sin. If we don’t, are we any better than those standing by mocking Jesus? Aren’t we by continued willful sin, mocking Jesus by in effect saying to Him, “Suffer a little more for that sin of mine so I can continue on in it; drink even more dregs from that bitter cup of agony.”
The other thing we must remember is that as Jesus was ridiculed even in the midst of His saving work, so too will we be ridiculed for our faith in Him. It will take different forms for each of us, but as we live out our faith in Christ in an increasingly hostile world, we can and should expect increasing temptation and pressure to give it up, to conform more and more to the world. That will always be the temptation for us and part of that cross that we bear as we follow Jesus.
But in the midst of Jesus drinking down the bitter cup of suffering and being tempted and ridiculed by sinful man, what do we see with Jesus? –Complete faithfulness to God and to His saving work. For us, that means that our salvation is certain and complete. Again remember Jesus’ word that brought all this ridicule about—My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? Notice, even as Jesus is forsaken as the world’s sinner and suffering the very pangs of hell—the forsakenness of God—He has not left/ abandoned/ turned His back of His heavenly Father. He is still holding to Him, clinging to Him. He never gives up His love of His Father; He never stops doing His will. It is still: My God, My God.
It was God’s will that Jesus suffer and die for the sins of the world. There was no other way to bring about the salvation of the world. There would be no Elijah or no angel or any other deliverer coming to save Jesus from the cross; His innocence and righteousness would not be declared by a rescue from the cross. Instead, it was the Father’s will that Jesus drink the cup of suffering and so be made perfect through suffering [Hb 2.10], that is, His perfection and holiness would be shown on the cross.
And here, dear Christian, is our greatest comfort: Jesus remained faithful; He offered Himself as the once for all sacrifice for sin. He faithfully and perfectly and completely drank down to the bitter dregs this cup of suffering. He laid down His life and willingly entered into death to destroy death. And the Father accepted His sacrifice and that was declared to the world on Easter Sunday morning. Our sins are forgiven we are reconciled to God; our salvation is certain in our faithful suffering Savior. INJ Amen