JESUS CRIED OUT WITH A LOUD VOICE
Sermon Text, St. Mark 15:33-38. 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?” Some of those who stood by, when they heard that, 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 itto Him to drink, saying, “Let Him alone; let us see if Elijah will come to take Him down.” 37 And Jesus cried out with a loud voice, and breathed His last. 38 Then the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.
Lord, this is Your Word and these are Your words. Sanctify us by the truth. Your Word is truth. By these words, when we hear our Savior utter a bitter cry, teach us that You take away all our bitterness; and when we hear our Savior utter a triumphant cry, teach us that You have triumphed over death and all danger, for us. Help us to use this Your Word to cry out to You with a loud voice asking for help, and to join Your triumph with loud, glad songs of praise and glory to You. Amen!
Dear fellow redeemed by the cross and death of Jesus:
Two times in these few verses, we hear that “Jesus cried out with a loud voice.” If you think about it, Jesus is the opposite of everyone else.
Remember when Jesus was silent? When people were lying about Him, hurling insults at Him, hurting Him with every word? “He answered nothing.” When it would be only natural for Him to cry out, He didn’t.
On the cross it’s the other way around. We know people who are dying, under much less extreme suffering than Jesus, and they couldn’t cry out even if they wanted to. But look at Jesus. In these last 15 hours, He was beaten and whipped, punched and pushed, marched unmercifully, in pain from the crown of thorns pressing into his scalp, He could hardly stand, and He’d been forced to carry His cross-beam and staggered under it.
And up on the cross, His normal breathing pattern was reversed, so that getting air into His lungs and breathing it out made Him have to inch up and down, lifting Himself up by pulling His wrists – where He would feel the pain of the nails in His hands – and by pushing up on His feet – where He again felt pain from the nails – and it would send a severe shooting pain up His legs and arms. On top of it all He’s tired from holding Himself in position and inching Himself to where He could take breaths.
Yet Jesus “cried out with a loud voice,” not once but twice. When other people would cry out, He didn’t. When others couldn’t cry out, He did.
First, “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?’ ” This was a bitter cry of lament, sadness, loneliness, despair, because God the Father turned away from His only Son, let all of His anger for all the sins of every person completely pour out and drown His Son, and for the first time did not show Him a drop of compassion.
Then after showing us how Jesus’ crying-out was misunderstood, Mark skips to the very end. Again we hear: “Jesus cried out with a loud voice,” but what a difference! This is not a bitter cry. There’s no defeat in His voice. Instead, “Jesus cried out with a loud voice, and breathed His last,” is a triumphant cry! He is not weakly wilting under the heavy hand of death like us. He’s going to meet death, to destroy it.
As we hear twice this crying-out we need to hear especially: It’s human.
What’s more human than crying out? It’s what babies do the second they come into the world. All the way to the grave there’s crying out: Crying out because he got a bigger cookie, or she got a better present, or they passed an unjust law, or the government is taking from you, or the teacher graded you unfairly, or you don’t get paid enough, or the value of your home went too low, or this pain inflicted by a friend hurts, or the words a family member spoke are too much to bear, or this death is too hard to take.
Jesus’ crying out is not tainted by sin. He’s taken all the sin that belongs to you. He’s taken your sufferings. As He cries out, “My God, My God,” He gathers up all your crying-out into one forlorn cry. We know by this that He isn’t a God who is above it all. His human nature is doing this. He makes your cry His own. “He is Man, man to deliver.” He takes all the sin out of your crying-out, purifies you and your cries, brings all of it to God in one vehement, plaintive cry. We need Him to be true Man to do this.
That’s also true of His triumphant cry. We need a triumphant cry coming not just from one who is true God, but also and especially from one who is true Man. Of course He can speak triumphantly as God. But if He, who suffered for us, who’s at the point of utter and complete exhaustion, pain and misery, suddenly cries out triumphantly, goes to meet death to destroy it by His rising, and by His death rips the thick curtain – not just the one in the temple but the true wall of separation that separates us from God because of our sins! – then we can be absolutely sure there’s a Savior for us.
But we are not only to hear this cry. We are to use this cry.
After all this, God doesn’t want you to be silent. He wants you to cry out to Him with a loud voice. Not sinfully, not selfishly, not comparing how good others have it, not to defend wrong desires, impatient words or hurtful actions. But He does want you to cry out to Him.
Don’t think it shows a weak faith if you cry out to Him with tears, full of worries, stuck in sadness, looking in vain for a light at the end of the tunnel. Cry out to Him for help. It’s joining your voice with Jesus, crying with faith even when you don’t hear an answer. Jesus has shown the end of the tunnel. He’ll go with you through the darkness. He went there first.
We are also to join Jesus’ triumphant cry. Even when you don’t see the good that you want to see, what we need most of all is not to see something but to hear it: to hear Jesus’ triumphant cry at His moment of death.
This is the voice of victory,
the voice of your Redeemer,
the voice that is uttered only when He finished everything on the cross,
the voice that declares that all your sins are forgiven,
the voice that sends the devil away,
the voice that defends you before the throne,
the voice that pleads for you with His blood,
the voice that speaks pardon and peace,
the voice that puts words in your mouth and a song in your heart,
the voice that replaces your complaint with praise.
This is the voice the apostle John heard in the Revelation, “the voice from heaven, like the voice of many waters and like the voice of loud thunder,” which utters the “new song” of the gospel, that we’re learning to sing.
When you say the creed, when you say, “I believe,” when you say Amen to His absolution and His words of eternal life, you are beginning to join His last triumphant cry, which is a loud, glad song of victory. Amen!