The Suffering of the Messiah | Psalm 22

Psalm 22, for the director of music to the tune of the Doe of the Morning, a Psalm of David.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from me,

saving me, for so far from my cries of

anguish? My God, I cry out by day,

but you do not answer by night, but I find no rest.

Yet you are enthroned as the holy one. You are the one, Israel praises.

In you our ancestors put their trust. They trusted and you delivered them.

To you they cried out and were saved. In you they trusted and were not put to shame.

But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by everyone, despised by the people.

All who seek me mock me. They hurl insults, shaking their heads.

He trusts in the Lord, they say. Let the Lord rescue him.

Let him deliver him, since he delights in him. Yet you brought me out of the womb.

You made me trust in you, even on my mother's breast.

At my mother's breast.

From birth I was cast on you. From my mother's womb you have been my God.

Do not be far from me, for trouble is near and there is no one to help.

Many bulls surround me, strong bulls of bashing encircle me,

roaring lions that tear their prey, open their mouths wide against me.

I poured out like water and all my bones are out of joint.

My heart has turned to wax. It has melted within me.

My mouth is dried up like a pot shirt and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.

You lay me in the dust of death. Dogs surround me, a pack of villains encircle me.

They pierce my hands and my feet. All my bones are on display.

People stare and gloat over me. They divide my clothes among them and cast slots for my garment.

But you Lord, do not be far from me. You are my strength.

Come quickly to help me. Deliver me from the sword.

My precious life from the power of the dogs. Rescue me from the mouths of the lions.

Save me from the horns of the wild oxen.

I will declare your name to my people. In the assembly I will praise you.

You who fear the Lord, praise him. All you descendants of Jacob honour him.

Revere him. All you descendants of Israel.

For he has not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one.

He has not hidden his face from him, but has listened to his cry for help.

From you comes the theme of my praise in the great assembly.

Before those who fear you, I will fulfil my vows.

The poor will eat and be satisfied. Those who seek the Lord will praise him.

May your hearts live forever. All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord.

And all the families of the nations will bow down before him.

For dominions belong to the Lord. And he rules over the nations.

All the rich of the earth will feast and worship all who go down to the dust.

Will kneel before him. Those who cannot keep themselves alive.

Posterity will serve him. Future generations will be told about the Lord.

They will proclaim his righteousness, declaring to the people yet unborn.

He has done it.

Good morning everyone.

If we've not met before, my name is Michael, one of the elders here,

and it is absolute delight to have you with us.

If you've not been here before, please don't rush off after.

Please stay for morning tea.

Also, the subject that we're going to be looking at this morning,

as you may have just realised in the text that was read for us,

it's quite a heavy subject.

So if you would like prayer for anything that you hear this morning,

please come and find either myself or one of the elders,

and we want to pray with you.

We want to hear what's going on, and we'd love to stand with the Lord with you.

Let's pray now before we come to this text.

Father God, we are in awe of the Gospel,

and we ask this morning that as we turn our attention,

that you would cause our hearts by your Holy Spirit to be opened to these words.

Father, we don't want to be filled with information.

We want to be filled with good news.

We ask that your Spirit enlightens the eyes of our hearts,

and that we would be a people that would be running hard after you,

a people living in awe and worship of what you have done.

We ask that you would teach us from these words this morning

for the sake of Christ, and we ask him for this in his name, amen.

I wonder if you've ever faced a situation where you felt like

you had absolutely no one to reach out to,

no one that understood, and you felt totally abandoned and alone.

Not just ostracised by friends and family, mind you, but even from God himself.

Who do you run to in that situation?

What do you do?

Where do you go, and how do you act in that deep, dark pit of despair?

Well, believe it or not, our author this morning, the king of Israel, David,

was once described as a man after God's very own heart,

and he felt just like that.

Felt just like Jonah in the belly of the beast,

sinking deeper and deeper into oblivion with no way out.

And although David felt abandoned, cast off,

confused with the situation that he found himself in,

he didn't stay in that place for long.

No, he found peace in the storm and joy in the so-called valley,

not by his circumstances changing, or by looking to anything in and of himself,

but by looking to our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.

And I want to show you what I'm talking about this morning in just a couple of points.

First, in verses 1 to 21, we'll look at how David found hope, real hope,

in the midst of a hopeless situation.

And then second, in verses 22 to 31, we'll look at why we, like David, have hope.

And that is because of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, to which this wholesome teaches us.

So again, just two points this morning.

First, how to find hope in a hopeless situation,

and then second, why we can have hope in the first place.

So if you have your Bibles with you this morning,

look with me at just the first couple of words in verse 1 there.

We read, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

So straight off the bat, our author, David, he brings us, the audience, into a situation

which he describes as a deep, dark pit of hopelessness.

Now for whatever reason, we don't really know because David hasn't given us the context here,

but our author has found himself crying out to God.

And because he hasn't felt or seen God move anywhere in his life, he feels completely abandoned.

Now on top of not having the context here, David also doesn't give us a timeframe.

But you can feel it in verse 2.

There's this feeling of being totally abandoned as he cries out to God by day and by night.

All this to say, in just the first couple of verses that we have here,

we have a scene of Israel's king calling on God in the midst of his situation

and is wrestling to know where God is and to what on earth he is doing.

And it's absolutely crushing him.

Now there's something that I want you to notice here with me, church.

You see, whatever may be going on and however long,

you might notice that this isn't the language of a man who was rebelling against God.

It's not the language of a man who's backsliding or even doubting God's existence in the midst of all of this.

Now this is the heart cry of a man in the prayer closet,

wrestling with his own inner turmoil with what he is feeling in the moment

over and against what he knows to be true.

Notice it.

In just the first couple of verses, there's this language of intimacy.

He isn't saying, God, if you're out there somewhere or just in case if someone's listening, please help.

No, notice it.

He says, my God, my God, why?

Why, my God, I'm crying out to you.

And I want you to see that language because it tells us something about the author here.

This is a man that is well acquainted with the presence of God.

A man that knows what it is to be in relationship with God.

A man that knows what it is to see God work in his life.

In other words, this is a man that knows what it is to have friendship with our God.

And so in verse three, he starts to direct his thoughts to the type of God that he has come to know.

Saying, you, you are enthroned as the Holy One.

You are the one Israel praises.

See what David is doing here in the midst of the deep, dark pit.

David feels one way, but in it all, he starts to remind himself of the reality of who God is.

In other words, he's not relying on his feelings to give him the facts.

No, he weighs his very real feelings in the scales of the reality of who God has revealed himself to be.

This is as David says here, God is a mighty King.

He's the King of heaven.

He is the one Israel praises.

And our author, he thinks on these things because the people of God praise the King of heaven as historically in the midst of their most tragic of circumstances,

in the midst of their most worst of situations, in the midst of their most grotesque of hopelessness.

The people of God have put their trust in God and he delivered them.

They cried out and they were saved, they trusted and weren't put to shame as we see in verses four and five.

That's the history that our author reminds himself of here in the midst of feeling utterly forsaken.

Whenever God's people have called upon the King of heaven, they have not been put to shame.

This is what makes these next few lines so interesting.

You see, David knows all about this history, but then he doesn't go on to compare himself there in verse six with the great heroes of the faith.

The great heroes like Abraham, Joseph, Moses or Joshua, no, he goes on to compare himself with one of the most insignificant invertebrates on the planet.

That people either walk over, step on or pick up and simply throw away.

I say that's interesting because what we're meant to get here is that David doesn't see that just because he is the King of Israel,

that he has earned anything from God, or that God is obligated to give him his attention or obliged to even answer him.

Now, David acknowledges that in light of all who God is, he is like a worm in the soil that is wiggling and pleading with the great King.

And thus, David acknowledges that for anything to happen, it must come by God's mercy and grace alone.

Again, church, we don't have all the details here, but whatever the case may be, David's turmoil, it's starting to be noticed by those around him,

to the point that they mock and taunt him for his faith in what he knows to be true about the God that he has come to put his trust in.

And thus, yet again, David, for the second time he reflects, he meditates on what he knows to be true of the God that he knows in the midst of how he feels,

saying there in verse 9, you, you brought me out of the womb.

You made me trust in you, even at my mother's breast, from birth I was cast on you, from my mother's womb, you have been my God.

What are we to make of this so far?

Well, it's very apparent in the text before us this morning that David, he feels like a dirty, worthless creature with no hope.

Look at what else we've seen so far.

In the midst of it all, in the midst of this deep, dark valley of hopelessness, David, he reminds himself of a few things here.

First, he reminds himself that God is enthroned in heaven, which is to say he is mighty to save, which second, God has proven to be the case time and time and time and time again,

in that he rescues his people when they call upon him.

And third, God has always been there for our author, always been there even before he knew his left hand from his right.

Even before, mind you, he knew how to call upon the name of the Lord to be saved.

And so though David feels and sees one thing, in light of who he knows who God is, he makes this bold request of the King of Heaven there in verse 11.

He says, do not be far from me, for trouble is near.

There is no one to help.

I wonder if you felt like this.

I wonder if you felt abandoned on every side, not able to see or feel God working anywhere in your life.

Brother and sister, you're not here by any mistake this morning.

This is such a wonderful thing that Scripture is teaching us here.

God doesn't abandon nor forsake his people.

Now that's not to say that we won't ever feel abandoned.

We might do from time to time and that deep dark pit that you find yourself in can feel pretty hopeless.

But the fact of the matter is this, God is still the King of Heaven.

He's still, by his mercy and grace, rescues his people when they call upon him.

And he still cares for the intimate details of every single one of us.

And so though the temptation comes knocking at the door and you might feel like God has cast you off,

the fact of the matter is very different.

And we can call upon our Heavenly Father in our time of need and know that he hears us.

How did David come to this conclusion?

How did he get to this place of great boldness and know that God would hear him,

even when his feelings were preaching to him the exact opposite?

Well, he didn't make it up. He didn't pluck it out of the sky.

He didn't even go with his guts.

No, he reminded himself of what he knew to be true about our God.

Because God had revealed who he is to his people.

Church, David drew on the truth of who God revealed himself to be in the midst of his very real and present anguish.

And it caused him to turn his eyes to heaven and say, I have no other health.

I'm hopeless.

But what I know to be true of you, my God, I trust you.

Do not be far from me.

Now, in verses 12 to 21, we get a similar sort of picture of an incredibly desperate man.

And I want you to notice that as Jackie so wonderfully read the passage for us,

that our author used a lot of imagery in these verses.

Imagery of wild animals that were ready to rip and tear the author apart.

He talks of wild bulls, roaring lions and ferocious dogs surrounding him.

And he even sees a brutality coming that is like no other.

In that his enemies would pierce his hands and feet.

And that his executioners would stare at his bones, which were on display as they stripped him naked to divide his clothes and cast lots for his garment.

This is all language that's meant to give us a sense of our author being utterly brutalized and tortured by his enemies.

So I want you to notice it again.

Notice that it's not like David feels all of this, but then starts to say,

chin up, onward Christian soldiers, she'll be right, mates.

No, he gets extremely raw with our God.

Because the situation that he sees coming there in verse 14, he says it pours him out like water.

It melts his heart within him.

To put it simply, he is absolutely terrified.

And so again, he cries out to God, pleading to the King of Heaven that he would come down and get in the dirt with this worm and rescue him.

And saying in verses 19 to 21, come quickly to help me, deliver me from the sword, my precious life, from the power of the dogs, rescue me from the mouth of the lions.

Save me from the horns of the wild oxen.

Brothers and sisters, don't we see something about the nature of prayer here?

God, he doesn't just invite us, but he wants us to go to him with it all.

We see it with our author, he is desperate and utterly terrified.

And so he doesn't sugarcoat the way that he's feeling and run like Adam from God.

No, just the opposite, something causes him to run to God and he cries out and doesn't hold back.

Questioning, pleading, pleading with his God to do something in his situation.

This isn't a man that babbles on with rote-learned prayers, hoping that his many words will be heard.

What we have here is a picture of a man in deep pain and trepidation knowing that because of the nature of our God,

no matter how he feels he is able to trust him and not be put to shame.

We as the people of God learn something tremendous about the nature of prayer here.

And that's first, that's David.

He found hope in a hopeless situation because he wasn't manipulated by his feelings.

No, he reflected on what he knew about God and that's that God can be trusted by his people in any situation

and they can call upon him in the midst of it all, no matter how hopeless it might seem.

So that's why what we see next has to be the most outstanding thing in our passage.

Because as we turn our attention to the second part of this psalm,

well there is nothing to indicate that David has been rescued and is now safe from the situation that he's been describing

or that it had changed in any way.

Now from verses 22 right through to the end, you'll notice that most of the language is in the future tense.

So as to indicate to us that this is David's great hope for what he knows will happen once God's great mercy and grace delivers him.

First in verses 22 to 25, David he envisions a scene where at some point in the future he'll stand with the people of God in the great assembly.

That would have been the tabernacle where he will lead them in the praise and worship of their God

and declare to his brothers and sisters that God is still a God that hears the cries of his people and rescues the suffering and afflicted.

Second in verses 26 right through to 31, David he has this sense that this good news of God's salvation won't just be a message for Israel,

but a message that will infiltrate all peoples and be proclaimed around the entire world where all the families of the nations will bow down before the Lord.

Church in just these last few verses in the midst of what seems like an absolute hopeless situation,

what David sees is an amazing vision of God's grace and mercy being poured out on the king of Israel.

To the point that he envisions that he'll be brought back from the absolute horrors of death to be put in a position where he'll witness the good news of God's saving message proclaimed to the nations.

An absolutely amazing scene of faith in God's love, mercy, grace and mighty saving hand.

And this is the most incredible thing about this Psalm.

You see, as you read through the history of David's life, there's nothing to indicate to us that he ever fully went through what he is describing here.

It never went through events like this to the extent that he had described it.

No, there's no event in David's life where he was totally and utterly forsaken by God, where his hands and feet were actually pierced,

where his bones were actually all poured out of joint, where his garments were torn off and bartered for,

and where he was made to really and fully lay in the dust, which is to say that he was made to return to the dust from which he had been made.

And that's because, according to the New Testament writers, David wasn't ultimately speaking about himself here.

No, he was actually under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God, looking forward to and writing about someone to come that would really and truly go through these very events in their most fullest and absolute expression.

In Matthew 27, as Jesus was hanging there on the cross, we're told in the last moments of his life that he actually cried out the words that we started with this morning,

my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And as he was doing that, as he hung there naked and in agony crying out to God,

it's reported by the evangelists that people mocked him and sneered at him and said he trusted in God. He should save him.

In fact, John quotes for Baton David's words of Psalm 22 in chapter 19 of his book saying that as Jesus hung there, that those that drove the nails into his hands and feet,

they took his garments and they cast lots for his clothing.

I mean, what an incredibly vivid and precise outworking of the words that we've looked at this morning.

But before we move on, we really need to understand something here. If we're going to capture the impact of Psalm 22.

You see, there's a reason why Jesus cried these very words of Psalm 22 out in the cross.

It was because he really was forsaken of the Father in that moment.

You see, because of the curse of his people's lawbreaking being met on him, Jesus was truly under the wrath of God.

It wasn't because of his wrongdoing, but because of the punishment of our lawless deeds, our iniquity, as Isaiah says, being placed on him.

The Apostle Paul says it like this in 2 Corinthians 5, God made him who had no sin to be sinned for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Brothers and sisters at the cross, Jesus didn't just feel abandoned, but was truly utterly and absolutely crushed because his life was being punished for our sin.

In other words, Jesus was made a sin offering and he died in our place on our account so that he might bring us to the God, the King of heaven.

And it was the manifestation of God's hatred of sin being poured out in that Jesus experienced the horrendous result of what our sin causes in that terrible hour.

An incredibly precise and vivid scene of David's words coming to fruition in the life of Israel's Messiah.

The very words that he uttered under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit were uttered some thousand years later by the Messiah on the cross.

The very King of heaven when he came down from his throne into the so-called dirt to rescue the worm.

But of course as we've seen this morning, that's not all David wrote on.

He also envisioned a time when the King of Israel would be in and amongst his people proclaiming the saving work of his God to his brothers and sisters.

And wonderfully the writer to the Hebrews picks up on these very verses after explaining that after Jesus descended to earth, after he suffered death, after he was raised to life,

after he ascended to heaven, that he is now crowned with glory and now at this very moment in the heavenly realm, in the heavenly tabernacle as it's described.

Jesus calls his brothers and his sisters to come and worship our God with him.

It's a little wonder after witnessing the death, the burial, the resurrection of Jesus that the New Testament writers said of our author this morning and asked to that he was a prophet.

He knew that God had promised him on oath that he would place one of his descendants on his throne.

Seeing what was to come, he spoke of the resurrection of the Messiah and that he wouldn't be abandoned to the realm of the dead, nor would his body see decay.

Church, as we wrap this up this morning, in one sense Psalm 22 is about knowing and trusting God in the midst of total and utter hopelessness.

David, he's given us a scenario of people mocking and threatening him all the while wrestling with his own inner turmoil which told him that God had forsaken him.

David, he certainly felt that.

God's people, they feel that from time to time and maybe you even feel like that at this very moment.

But as we've seen this morning, David's words in their ultimate sense, they pointed beyond themselves to one who would take the full brunt of these words upon himself.

They pointed forward to one who would truly and utterly be forsaken so that we might never have to be.

Church, Jesus was pierced for our transgressions and punished for the iniquity of our sin.

He was cast off for our lawlessness so that the full force of God's giving over to his wrath and abandonment to hell might never truly be met on us.

It's true that we won't always feel like God is there or that he loves us.

But like David in the midst of it all, let us remember exactly who God is and what he has done for his people.

God rescues those who call upon him.

God tells us if we call upon the name of the Lord that we won't be put to shame and no more clearly do we see God's grace and mercy and amen towards us then in the crucifixion

of his begotten, only begotten Son Jesus Christ.

It was the King of Heaven who took the sin of his people and tasted death for us.

But as we know, he didn't stay in the grave.

He was raised to life victorious and he ascended to heaven where he is now inviting us to come and worship our God.

Right at this very moment, the King of Kings and the Saviour of the world invites all people to come and worship him.

Have you done that?

Have you called upon the name of the Lord?

The words of Jesus are that he will in no way cast out anyone who comes to him.

Maybe you'll hear this morning you would say that you have been abandoned by people around you.

That you've been mocked, that you've been slandered and you would say that you have real enemies that if they could would want to take your life.

I can't imagine what some of you might be going through even at this very moment.

I couldn't fathom what events have taken place in your life.

But what I do know and what I can tell you is though you may feel like a filthy abandoned worm in the dirt,

there is one who knows exactly what it is to be mocked, abandoned, betrayed and even murdered.

And today he invites you to come to the throne of grace and to lay your burden, your anxiety before him.

Dear brother, dear sister, because of his life given for you, he has made you a precious son or daughter of our heavenly Father.

Hear this this morning, God never abandons his people for the sake of his son, for the sake of Christ.

He will never leave nor forsake you.

And though you might not feel it right now, though you might not see it at this very moment, there will come a time.

When without hindrance we will all worship and praise and glorify and bless and know our Lord and Saviour face to face.

And just one last thing here this morning.

Psalm 22 began in darkness, but as we've seen, the whole thing ends in this triumph.

And if we just think on those last few words of verses 30 to 31, it's got this missionary kind of vibe to it.

David, he sees the future generations that they'll be told of the Lord and that they'll proclaim his righteousness saying that he has done it.

Brothers and sisters, this gospel, this good news of God saving work in Jesus Christ on the cross was never designed to just stay with us.

We've been given a great commission by Heaven's King to go, to go and tell it, to go and proclaim it and tell people that he has done it.

He has accomplished salvation for all who call upon his name. And so let us go and let us ask our great God and Saviour that he would help us to tell others of this wonderfully good news that we have heard this morning.

Would you please pray with me?

Father God, we are in awe of the gospel. We're in awe of all that our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has done on the cross.

Father, there's many people in this room this morning, but the joy of their salvation is lacking.

But we know that we can ask that you would restore it, that we would have an assurance that we would know that what happened all those years ago on Calvary happened because you went to the cross for your people.

This morning, our Father, we asked that you would give us a great love, a yearning, a deep want to share this good news with those around us.

Father, we're nervous in many ways. We're worried in other ways, but we would ask that you would create situations for us in which your spirit would move and that we would proclaim to those around us, share in love that you have done it.

We ask for this in Jesus' name. Amen.