2026 Midweek Lenten Sermon C
Rev. Rolf Preus| March 11, 2026| Matthew 27:45-49
Now from the sixth hour until the ninth hour there was darkness over all the land. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Some of those who stood there, when they heard that, said, “This Man is calling for Elijah!” Immediately one of them ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine and put it on a reed, and offered it to Him to drink. The rest said, “Let Him alone; let us see if Elijah will come to save Him.”
On the last Sunday before Lent, we heard Jesus say to his disciples,
Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man will be accomplished. For He will be delivered to the Gentiles and will be mocked and insulted and spit upon. They will scourge Him and kill Him. And the third day He will rise again. (Luke 18:31)
Jesus told his disciples that the prophets wrote about his suffering, death, and resurrection. The most detailed prophesy of Christ’s suffering is found in Psalm 22. Jesus cites the beginning of that psalm in our text for today, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” The psalm goes on to describe what happened as Jesus was being forsaken by God on the cross. Listen to the words that David wrote in this psalm that describe the crucifixion of Jesus:
But I am a worm, and no man;
A reproach of men, and despised by the people.
All those who see Me ridicule Me;
They shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying,
“He trusted in the Lord, let Him rescue Him;
Let Him deliver Him, since He delights in Him!”
You have brought Me to the dust of death.
For dogs have surrounded Me;
The congregation of the wicked has enclosed Me.
They pierced My hands and My feet;
I can count all My bones.
They look and stare at Me.
They divide My garments among them,
And for My clothing they cast lots.
One of the proofs of the inspiration of the Bible is the uncanny precision of Old Testament prophecies of Christ. How could David have described crucifixion hundreds of years before there was such a thing? Only by the revelation of the Holy Spirit. David, in the Spirit, foresaw what would happen in the fulness of time a thousand years before it happened.
It had to happen. The crucifixion of Jesus was God’s plan. It was his eternal plan. In Revelation 13:18 John calls Jesus “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” St. Peter writes,
You were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. He indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you. (1 Peter 1:18-20)
At the very center of human history is God’s act of redemption when he saved this world from sin, death, and hell. It was, to put it mildly, a strange occurrence. What you could see and what was happening before your eyes were radically different. From the perspective of those who were watching him suffer, his cry to heaven was a pathetic plea for help from Elijah, the prophet. Elijah, you might recall, went to heaven without dying first. Many people expected him to reappear. The religious leaders who had engineered Christ’s crucifixion gloated at his apparent failure. He was mocked, tortured, spat upon, treated with utter disrespect and contempt, and nailed to a cross to die as a criminal. That’s obviously failure. And that’s what they saw. Good riddance!
But what they saw as Jesus’ defeat was in fact God’s victory over all evil. Jesus died on a Friday. Today, we call it Good Friday, though looking at it without the eyes of faith sees nothing good. From the sixth to the ninth hour – that is, between noon and three in the afternoon – the land was plunged into darkness. It was not a solar eclipse. It was not a natural event. It was a supernatural event, witnessed all over the world. During those three hours God fought the powers of darkness. He fought and won.
God was nailed to a cross. The impossible happened. God forsook God. The eternal unity between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit was not and could not be broken. Jesus remained the Father’s beloved Son in whom he was well pleased. At no point in time did that love grow weak. It is unbreakable.
But Jesus, true man and true God, took the place of sinners. Listen to how St. Paul describes this substitution. In Galatians 3:13 we read, “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’).” He writes in 2 Corinthians 5:21, “For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” Jesus was innocent. Yet he was counted guilty. Sin was imputed to him, reckoned to him, laid on him, so that he was made to be sin. He was cursed. Though he was God, he was abandoned by God.
Jesus cried out his anguish. By taking the place of sinners he chose to bear the punishment for sin. The soul that sins it shall die. Not just bodily death, but damnation under the wrath of God. The pure, holy, innocent Son of God who loved God above all things and pleased his Father in everything he thought, said, or did must bear divine retribution against all sinners. That means abandonment.
Jesus experienced hell on the cross. He was forsaken by God, as if he were a sinner damned to hell. Never did his love waver. As he received the filth of sin he kept his purity. As he bore the curse of the law, he faithfully honored it. As he died, suffering the wrath of God, he loved his Father to the end.
The wrath of God poured out against his innocent Son is the scandal of our Christian religion. It offends just about everyone. The nominal Christian who views Jesus as a great moral teacher is offended by the gruesome and violent necessity of his crucifixion, denying it altogether. “I don’t need such a terrible payment for my sins,” says the moralist.
The Eastern Orthodox churches flat out deny that God punished Jesus for our sins on the cross. So do many prominent Lutheran theologians. The Jews and the Muslims may fight against each other, but they are united in their hostility to the cross. Both religions teach salvation by doing good works, so they have no need for a Savior. But they do. Everyone does.
You do. You need a Savior every day. This is why we pray that God would imprint the image of Christ’s crucifixion of our hearts. We speak carelessly, selfishly, thoughtlessly and cause hurt. We judge. We look after our own interests first before considering the needs of others. We are dissatisfied with what God has given us and covet more and more of what belongs to others. We seek pleasure over duty. And yes, we embrace hatred when we should embrace love. That’s sin. We do it and are guilty of it and that sin separates us from God.
Consider your sins. At least those you can recall. Thinking of what you have done wrong, how do you think you stand with God? Do you enjoy a perfect fellowship with him? Or do you feel estranged? Or do you wonder if perhaps he’s gotten tired of your failures and wants nothing more to do with you? Do you know that you have God’s approval? You do know you don’t deserve it. So, do you have it? Or will God discard you as being unfit to stand before him?
Listen to the cry of Jesus! “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Learn the answer to this plaintive cry. The answer is so that God would not forsake you. Jesus took your place. Since God forsook Jesus, he will not forsake you. Listen to the cry of Jesus and know that God’s anger against you for your sins has been taken away.
He forsook Jesus who took your place. Thus, as surely as Jesus cried out to God lamenting being forsaken, so surely God will never forsake those who put their trust in Jesus. Repeatedly God says to us in the Bible, “I will never leave your or forsake you.”
The cry of Jesus on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” makes Jesus the rock of offense and the stone of stumbling for those who don’t believe. For us, it is our greatest comfort. The words of the hymn express our faith:
To me the preaching of the cross
Is wisdom everlasting
Thy death alone redeems my loss,
On thee my burden casting
I, in thy name, a refuge claim
From sin and death and from all shame
Blest be thy name, O Jesus! Amen