It was at nine o’clock in the morning that they crucified the Lord, after His long night of agony in the garden of Gethsemane, where He fought out in His mind and soul the necessity of death. He had been through the bitter, drawn-out trial, and the torture and flogging. He waited the long hours that stretched before Him, and that would close only with His death.
In the long hours that followed, He had to endure the taunts and jibes of the crowd and the presence of the self-righteous Pharisees and priests, and look upon the sorrow of His loved ones.
At midday, the clearness of the Palestinian day was obscured, and a darkness deepened over the guilty city. For our Lord, it was a merciful thing; but for the people, it must have been ominous and foreboding, like the guilt that was perhaps eating into the conscience of many.
Then, after three silent hours, sacrificed as the rest of His life, for us men and our salvation, Jesus uttered the first words of the twenty-second Psalm—the cry of Dereliction, as it is called—and lifts the veil for an instant on the incredible suffering of our Lord. And then, finally, this last cry.
And it is here that we stop, for this cry, as the Bible calls it, is not the thing that we would expect would come from the lips of one who had suffered so, and was in such a state of exhaustion.
For this was no feeble moan—or even painful cry—as we might expect after our gracious Lord had undergone such harrowing suffering at the hands of the men He had come to love and help. This was a shout. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all use the same word, and they all dwell on the loudness of the cry:
“The Lord let out a great shout.”
It was—incredibly—a shout of victory:
The strife is o’er, the battle done,
The victory of life is won,
The song of triumph has begun.
This was the last cry of Christ from the Cross.
Now here is another strange thing—the shout of Christ was like the echo of another shout that was uttered not many hours before the Lord died.
They cried, “Crucify Him,” and after having been given the chance to reflect, and repent of their mob hysteria, or hypocrisy, or self-righteousness, and whatever else moved the members of that crowd, they shouted with greater intensity; their voices rose to a roar—“Crucify Him.”
In these two shouts lie the kernel of our relationship as sinners to the gracious and loving and merciful heavenly Father.
We stand before the Cross of Christ tonight with the roar of guilt and the crucifying shout in the air.
We are sinners, and our sin is no whisper of frailty or imperfection. It is the shout of defiant wickedness, and of hardness of heart, and of self-interest, and of meanness, and of self-seeking, and of disloyalty, and of disbelief.
You say these are not heinous crimes—but they are, for they are what put Christ on the Cross, and what His Cross throws in relief. From the man in the mob, who ran with it, echoing its shallowness and its viciousness, to the refined leaders, who were above the crowd and were too cultivated to shout, but addressed each other prudely and self-righteously, “He saved others, Himself he cannot save,” through all those who stood in ignorance, and wilful, and unmoved, and loveless, and heedless, we stand under the cloud of guilt which hung over the terrible scene.
One of the works of Christ on the Cross is to show man what sin is. To make man conscious of his shame, and see his disgrace.
We stand in the shadow of His Cross like those who waited through the silent three hours.
But listen—from the depth of His suffering and the shadow of man’s guilt, the Lord stirs, and with strength and spirit not that of a dying man, He utters a shout of victory: “It is finished!”
The very sin that is shown by His death on the Cross is conquered by that Cross.
The roar of the guilty crowd is answered by a triumphant shout from the Cross. Sin is revealed, but in that very time, a spotless life is given in obedience and love to break that sin, and to give men the means to conquer his sin.
How it is—we cannot tell. There are as many ideas of how God, through the death of Jesus, can forgive us our sin.
Our view is too limited to define it. We can only accept it.
All that we know is—that He does. His Cross cancels out our sin.
We know that He knew God’s mind and heart perfectly. He knew that God was not a God who demanded rigid obedience to a legalistic code.
We know that our ignorance is reflected in the ignorance of the crowd. The Pharisees were ignorant of God’s nature. They thought that God demanded the death of a sinner. They could not see God in a man who touched common humanity as Jesus did. The crowd was ignorant. It could not discern the word of truth or the touch of love.
We know that these things meet together in the Cross, and that by God’s grace Jesus’ knowledge conquers our ignorance and we see.
So it is with our disobedience. Jesus’ preaching and teaching and His very life set before the people God’s claims—but they steadfastly refused to accept it.
But Jesus was obedient unto death, and His obedience meets our disobedience at the Cross, and we become obedient.
Then there is the impartiality of some of us as we see it in the crowd. Let religion leave us alone, and we will leave it alone. But Jesus was partial to us. He came and sought us. And we meet Him at the Cross, and start to seek Him.
Then there is our hatred. He meets it with love, and we begin to love.
There is that intellectual aloofness. Let us, we say, believe without being badgered about—if our reason carries us there—that we cannot know anything about God. Some of the Pharisees were like that.
But God—the Almighty—left His glory and took upon Himself the form of man.
And so we could go on. At every point the Cross of Christ meets our shame and disgrace, and removing the barriers that we have set up between ourselves and God, saves us from ourselves and from sin.
I know not how—I know that it is so.
The last cry of Christ from His Cross was a shout of victory.
It is a glorious answer to that other shout by the crowd.
A great sacrifice has matched great sin.
A great victory has overcome great failure and ruin.
The Son of God has become our Saviour.
So let us all come to the Cross now and meet Him there, and be transformed.
Let us pray this in our hearts:
Lord, I know I had part in crucifying Thee, but now I come to be forgiven, and saved, and cleansed.
***
"Eternal God, we lift up our voices in praise to Thee now—to exalt Thy name as the Almighty Eternal God.
We would tremble at our presumption to even think about Thee, who art so far above and beyond us, if it were not that we know that—incredibly—Thou hast loved us, and dost welcome our respect and love for Thee.
Such knowledge is too much for us, O God. We can only bring to Thee our humble and glad thanks, and stammer our inadequate words as we try to express to Thee what Thy love and Thy Son mean to us.
For every care and gift that has led us to this time, bowed before Thee with all the comforts and joys of life about us, and all the spiritual treasures of heaven before us—we thank our heavenly Father.
We cannot but be conscious of our meanness as our minds touch upon Thy grace. And we ask Thy forgiveness for the 1000 expressions of our unworthiness.
For Thy material provision—every day given by Thy hand—we have been unthankful, taking it all as our due and never looking beyond the heaped plate to the author of the plant and the sun and the rain. Forgive us, O God.
For the spiritual food that has been made available, and which we have disregarded.
For the gifts of personality which we have used and enjoyed, and by the display of which we have proudly accepted the praise of men.
For crying for the things we have not needed and refusing Thy gifts of faith and peace and joy, we ask forgiveness.
We pray for those whom Christ would have sought out and touched if He had been here.
For young men and women who would learn the way of eternal life.
For those in the lowly and despised offices of this city.
For the physically and mentally afflicted.
For those who by race or position or profession are outside those welcome of men’s groups.
May this Church be open always to those, and by love and self-sacrifice do the Work of Him who is the head of this Church.
Amen."
