Psalm 22

Let's look together in Psalm 22. Psalm 22, let's start reading in verse 1. Now it says to the chief musician, upon Ejilath-Shehar, a psalm of David. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring? O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest or answerest not, and in the night season, and I'm not silent.

But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel. Our fathers trusted in thee, they trusted and thou did deliver them. They cried unto thee and were delivered, they trusted in thee and were not confounded.

But I am a worm and no man, a reproach of men and despised of the people. All they that see me laugh me to scorn, they shoot out the lip, they shake the head saying, he trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him. Let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him.

But thou art he that took me out of the womb, thou didst make me hope when I was upon my mother's breasts. I was cast upon thee from the womb, thou art my God from my mother's belly. Be not far from me, for trouble is near, for there is none to help." Now the description becomes more intense as we get down through these following verses, and we can see the descriptions of the trial and the crucifixion.

At the end of verse 16, our verse 16 says, for dogs have compassed me, the assembly of the wicked have enclosed me, they pierced my hands and my feet. I may tell all my bones, they look and stare upon me, they part my garments among them and cast lots upon my vesture. But be not thou far from me, O Lord.

O my strength, haste thee to help me. Deliver my soul from the sword, my darling, from the power of the dog. Save me from the lion's mouth, for thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorn.

I'm sure we're very familiar with the fact that there is a significant break right at this point in the psalm, and the rest of the psalm looks out into the millennial blessing of the glory of God's kingdom, and there is surrounding blessing to all of mankind at the end of the psalm. Now I've been thinking of this psalm actually in connection to shepherding, although I'm not going to focus upon that today. If you look at this psalm, and then you look at the next psalm, and then you look at the following psalm, it's often been noted that they form a trilogy, and we could look at three aspects of the of the Lord as the shepherd.

In Psalm 22, he's the good shepherd giving his life for the sheep. It's the focus on the atonement. In Psalm 23, he's the great shepherd brought again from the dead, and it's his present ministry to us.

And Psalm 24 is the psalm of the king, and so it's the sovereign and the future glory, and the idea of the chief shepherd with crowns of glory. But I want to focus on a particular aspect as we think of Psalm 22, and most of the time when we look at Psalm 22, we are impressed by the uniqueness, uniqueness of his sufferings, the solitary sufferer in the midst of his enemies. The last half of the psalm, the last part of the psalm, is really a great contrast to that, and it is really praising God in the midst of his friends.

So you have a beautiful contrast in the psalm. I have come to appreciate that not only in Psalm 22 do we have the reality of the uniqueness of his suffering of atonement. No one else could enter into that experience with him.

No one else could hold his hand. No one else could shelter him from the blow of the judgment of God coming upon him. No one could go through it with him.

He must do this alone. And yet there are certain aspects that are emphasized as we go down through the psalm, and I'm just going to highlight them with the word but, that not only show his personal resolution in the challenge of faith as you go down these expressions, but also he is the pattern for us. And I'm thinking of Hebrews where he is called the author and finisher of faith.

In that expression in Hebrews chapter 12, we are called upon, after all the examples in the Old Testament of the heroes of faith, of those who by their life of faith and even their deaths in faith, they confirmed that God is worth trusting. But in Hebrews 12, we move from that great cloud of witnesses, of testimony bearers, of the validity of faith, of the victory of faith, and we are caused to focus upon Christ. And we are encouraged to run the race course that is set before us.

Now basically that's telling us we don't get to choose how life turns out. We don't get to set our own race course. This is not optional.

If you are a Christian, you are on a journey of faith. And the race course is designed by someone else, by God himself. But we are to run with endurance our race course, but we are to keep our eyes upon the Lord Jesus, because he is the one who having gone ahead for us, has blazed the trail, and he is enthroned at the right hand of God.

He has successfully completed the course, and he is in the full joy and satisfaction of triumph of faith. So we're going to look at some of the issues that are the challenges. I want to just draw attention to them here.

In verse 1 to verse 3, you have the challenge of forsakenness, of being forsaken. And he resolves that issue, as he says in verse 2, rather, verse 3, but thou art holy. And so we have the but of God's holiness.

That's how he answers the torment of the experience of being forsaken. He vindicates God. You are holy.

That's why I'm forsaken. When you come down to verse 6, he says, but I am a worm. And I call that the but of his nothingness.

Others cried out to God and were heard. Others appealed to God and were delivered, but he hasn't been. And he accepts that lack of deliverance.

I am a worm and no man. The but of his nothingness. I'm going to take up these further.

In verse 9, he has been reproached. That's the emphasis from verse 6 to verse 9. He is scorned. He is mocked, and his relationship to God is being thrown back at him.

He trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him. Let him deliver him. What a challenge to the living God.

How does he resolve it? He says, but thou art he that took me out of the womb. And this is the but of conscious relationship with God. Nothing could shake the reality within him that he was in relationship to God and that he knew him as his God.

When we come to the last one in verse 19 that I want to draw attention to, what impresses me about this as you look at the descriptions that are given in this psalm, every one of these descriptions highlights the final moments before the victim is destroyed. You'll notice that it says they've pierced his hands and feet. They're staring at him.

They part my garments among them. They cast lots upon my vesture. It's utterly hopeless.

And the question might be raised, why bother crying up to God any longer? Why keep praying? There's absolutely no hope of deliverance now. But he says, but, but, be not thou far from me, O Lord. And then the descriptions that follow are an appeal to be delivered right at the very point of death itself.

And I call this the but of unshakable faith in God and its triumph. So we have two complementary aspects of this psalm that I think are very, very important for us to absorb. Could I put it to you very simply? The experience of the Lord Jesus on the cross of being forsaken should be the most significant thing that you can understand.

This is the meeting point of Christ and humanity. A man forsaken by God. A man abandoned to judgment by God.

Every human being is either going to experience this terrifying reality or is going to be saved from that terrifying reality because of Christ being forsaken. So Christ is the point of identification with every human being before God. Every human being's history has a point of connection with this man in this experience.

Either you will face what he faced or you will never face it because he faced it. And so on one hand, there is a solitariness of it, a uniqueness of it. But I want you to understand that the issue involved is exactly the same issue that every one of us must confront.

And that is simply this, the issue of sin. Why was he forsaken? Because of sin. And God in his holiness cannot, cannot fellowship with sin.

God and sin must always be separate. And so how do we get along with God? If we are saved here today, we are in his grace. God has made a provision for us so that we can walk with God in the light of his holiness.

1st John chapter 1 verses 5 to 9 express that beautiful provision for fellowship with God concerning sin. God is light. In him is no darkness at all.

We cannot walk in darkness and have fellowship with God. He will not take one step with us on the pathway of evil. Yet he has graciously provided for us so that we moment by moment can be sustained and preserved in relationship with himself because of the blood of Christ.

That's the cost for me to have fellowship with God. But let us please let us never allow ourselves to become complacent about the issue of sin in our own lives. We must confront it.

We must judge it. We must confess it. And we will find he is willing to forgive.

He is willing to cleanse and to permit us to walk with him again. But the very next one, and I would just say I'm going to give you a word that I think fits a quality or an attitude that I must have to experience the benefit of his blessing and provision. And that word is honesty.

I've said this many times that as long as you are honest, God's willing to work with you. If you're not willing to be honest, there's a closed door until you're willing to be honest with God. But the next thing that we run into here is the issue of shame.

You see, when it comes to our sin, the issue is that Christ was willing to bear our sin. And it's in that understanding that we can recognize what happened at Calvary. God is faithful.

His son was innocent, yet he was forsaken because he was bearing our sin. But also in that experience, he was bearing shame. And it seems if you follow down the line of the language of these verses, there seems to be a transition.

And it's hard to decide which side of the transition to put the emphasis. After saying in verse 5, they cried unto thee and were delivered, they trusted in thee and were not confounded, he says, but I am a worm and no man. In whose eyes? What does this mean? He is accepting the place as being nothing.

Not worthy to be seen as a man before God. That's hard to believe, isn't it? When it was the condensation of him to become a man, he humbled himself to enter humanity. And yet here he says, I'm a worm.

I would take it that this is because he was representing us in our shameful, dishonored human condition. He acknowledges the place of not being worthy to be heard as a worm to be crushed. But the context following that expression leads to what he was in the eyes of people.

They mock him. They look at him as unworthy to live. And so it's shame received from men.

So he bore our shame representing us before God. And at the same time, he bore shame for God's sake, representing God to man. Now I want to say that after the issue of sin, the problem of sin in a Christian's life, the challenge of confronting sin and overcoming sin as a stumbling block to the life of faith, the issue of shame, I would suggest, is the next greatest stumbling block of the Christian life.

How many of you here were saved as little children? And when you were a little child, you were unashamed to speak of the Lord Jesus. You would talk to anybody. But especially when you come into the teenage years, there comes an increasing awareness of who I am as seen in the eyes of my peers.

And unfortunately, as adults, we don't seem to outgrow this very well. We continually see ourselves as viewed by others as we imagine others to see us. And we are terrified of shame.

Shame will intimidate us. Shame will shut our mouths. The fear of looking like a fool, the fear of being reproached for association with Christ has stopped our mouths many, many times.

Remember that he took it for you. He experienced the true shame of a man dishonored before God as a man representing us in our shame and dishonor. But he also was willing to accept the reproach that was leveled against God.

Psalm 69 expands on this theme. And the Lord Jesus made no equivocation about it when he confronted those who would follow him. He says, you're going to have to be willing to take your cross, deny yourself, and follow me.

Why don't we follow him very well? Because it leads us into shame. It leads us into reproach. And yet the book of Hebrews comes to its climax by saying, let's go.

Let's go. Let's go forth to him outside the camp, bearing his reproach. If we truly enter into what he endured of shame, they stripped every dignity from him.

He was left hanging there, exposed, publicly humiliated, and they gambled for his clothes at the foot of the cross. They leave him in utter shame. He accepted that and he kept trusting in God.

Now we come down a little further. How does he respond to this shame of association? He responds to it in verse 9. But thou art he that took me out of the womb. Even though his relationship to God was so mocked.

Remember how many times he said, my father, my father. And they threw that back at him. He said he was the son of God.

Let him deliver him now if he will have him. I was really touched by this and thinking, why would the Lord Jesus look back to the very beginning of his human existence? I would suggest it's this. He is near the end of life.

He is in a condition of helplessness. It looks like there's no hope, no help for him. But he looks back to the very beginning of his human existence as a little baby and there's nothing more helpless than a human infant.

He says, you were my God from that moment. I trusted you. You caused me to confide in you.

You drew me to yourself to trust in dependence. And you're my God now. It's one of the ironies of life that as we begin life, so we end it.

How many people at the end of life suffer the helplessness of somebody else having to feed them, somebody else having to change them. All the things that a little helpless infant handles shamelessly is very different for us at end of life. So there's confronting sin.

There's confronting shame. And I would suggest that in this example of being looked at differently, separate, and again I'm going to say this is one of the challenges we all confront. We have to be willing to accept we are separated.

We are separated from other people. We do not belong in the group. We aren't part of the crowd.

We are associated with one who is despised, rejected, and forsaken. And the word that I would put with this is the word hope. We must place our hope, our desire towards God.

But when we come to the last part that I was looking at in this passage, the utter helplessness that is implied in the verses leading up to verse 19, he's on the cross, he's nailed to the cross, and yet he's still appealing to God for help. What was he praying for? Could I suggest to you something that I think is very, very important and precious to see at the cross? The last few moments after he cried, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Remember how some of them thought that he was calling for Elias and they go and get some, one of them goes and gets some water or some drink, some vinegar. Everything that happens after that is just in a few moments.

He receives the drink, he cries out, it is finished. He bows his head and he commits himself to the Father. There is a tremendous change in those last few moments on the cross.

And I want to just suggest to you that this is what is being looked at in verse 19 and 20 and 21. And I'll give you another rendering of this that is very helpful to me. When he says, O my strength, haste thee to help me, deliver my soul from the sword, my darling from the power or the paw of the dog, save me from the lion's mouth and from the horns of the unicorn.

And then the break. And then he says, you have answered me. I believe that happened before he died.

That he experienced the renewal of the closeness of God's presence. He died in peace. He died in triumph.

He was not destroyed by his enemies. They did not crush him. They could not destroy his faith in God.

He endured. He endured being forsaken by God himself for our sakes. He endured all the hatred, the contempt and the scorn, the worst that men could hurl toward him.

And he endured it trusting God. And God answered him. And in those last moments, he commits himself with full, perfect peace into the father's hands.

And then we have verse 22, what is recorded in John chapter 20 in resurrection and implied in Hebrews chapter two, I will declare thy name unto my brethren in the midst of the congregation. Will I praise thee? And then you notice what it says in verse 24 for he has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted. Neither has he hit his face from him, but when he cried unto him, he heard.

This is so beautiful to contemplate. Here is the one who was forsaken by God, yet he has no bitterness towards God. He says, I'm going to make your name known.

I'm going to reveal you to who? To my brethren, the ones that I was forsaken for. He has no bitterness towards God and he has no bitterness towards us. Instead, he's the one who has brought us together and brought us into the family of God and his, his encouragement to us today as the leader of faith, as the author and finisher of faith, leading us in our journey of faith.

He is saying God is worth trusting even into death itself. And he is making the father known. And as we heard given to us so powerfully already today, there is a kingdom.

There is a kingdom where he is going to be glorified, where he is going to be honored, where the blessing is going to flow out and out and out endlessly. But if you'll notice, if you follow through the end of this song, he is bringing praise to God. And in the midst of the assembly, we take so much for granted that we can sing together, we can worship together, but the Lord Jesus in our midst is leading, drawing out our worship, our trust towards the father.

May God bless his word.