Song…

Opening prayer…

Song…

Let’s begin going back in our minds to a great and horrible morning on the hill of Golgotha just outside Jerusalem. Soldiers are holding down His scourged tortured trembling body on the wooden beams. Another is holding an iron spike, like a railroad spike, on one of His wrists at the spot between the bones. With one deft stroke He drives the spike through His flesh. His cries fill the air. A few more strokes sink the spike deep into the wood, and one last blow at an angle perhaps to bend the spike so that He can’t pull His wrist off. Then they repeat the process with the other wrist. Then they bend His legs and place one foot on top of the other and drive a spike through both feet into the cross. Between His cries, the gospel of Luke tells us, He was saying, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” They pick up the head end of the cross. The base slides into the hole dug for it. They push the cross upright. His weight hangs on the nails.

There is a place in Scripture where, I believe, we are granted access into the mind of our Lord Jesus at that point as He hung there and we can hear some of His thoughts. Remember one of the few statements Jesus uttered aloud from the cross was “My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?” Those were the opening words of a familiar song in the Jews’ sacred hymnal, what we call the book of Psalms. You know when you hear the opening words of a familiar song you can’t help but continue to play the song in your mind. If I say, “Amazing grace how sweet the sound…” you probably can’t help but think, “That saved a wretch like me.  I once was lost but now I’m found, was blind but now I see.” Or, “Jesus loves me this know…” probably you can’t help but think “for the Bible tells me so. Little ones to Him belong. They are weak but He is strong.” If you were standing at the foot of the cross and familiar with the song that began with the words Jesus spoke, then as you played the song in your mind, you would have soon been dumbfounded, because you would be seeing the lyrics playing out in real life before your very eyes. The first half of the song is a vivid detailed description of an excruciating experience that was exactly what Jesus was experiencing. And the second half of the song is about the results the sufferer was anticipating, and they are exactly what Jesus was looking forward to. It’s Psalm 22 in our Bibles.

Who is this about?

It was understood to have been written a thousand years before by the Spirit guided king David. It’s written in the first person. And so it sounds like David is speaking of an experience of severe trial and suffering in his life. And that may be. If David was using rather hyperbolic/exaggerated language, this may describe an experience in his life. But Biblical scholars struggle to identify an experience of David that matches the language of this Psalm.

Maybe you can recall how Peter and Paul dealt with Psalm 16 according to the book of Acts. Psalm 16 was another Psalm of David written in the first person. But in Psalm 16:10 it says, “For You will not abandon my soul to Sheol; Nor will You allow Your Holy One to undergo decay.”  Peter in a sermon in Acts 2 and Paul in a sermon in Acts 13, both contended that Psalm, though written by David in first person, cannot be talking about David because it doesn’t fit David. After David died, his soul was left in Sheol, that is the realm of the dead, and his body underwent decay. The apostles said to their audiences, “You know David’s tomb and his decayed remains are still with us today. So how could that Scripture be about him?”  They explained that David was a prophet guided by God’s Spirit to write about the future Messiah, the future King and Savior of us all, that He would not be left in Sheol, nor undergo decay.

I suspect the apostles may have done the same kind of thing with Psalm 22, because it’s also a hard Psalm to fit with David. We know of hard times David went through, running for his life from King Saul and then later from his son Absalom. But this individual has been horribly, physically suffering and is on the threshold of death. There’s no one to help him, people are staring at him, and his enemies are mocking him. His hands and feet have been pierced and some are dividing his garments among themselves and casting lots for his clothing. I struggle to place that in the account of David’s life we have in Scripture. And then the glories to follow his suffering, described in the second half of the Psalm, I also find hard to fit with the results of any suffering of David. And, it sounds like as a result of this, people all over the world and generations to come will turn from their sins to the LORD and worship Him. So I’m thinking Psalm 22 is mainly about the experience of our Lord Jesus on the cross, written 1000 years before it would happen to confirm to us in this age that the good news we’ve heard is indeed true; because we can see that it was in God’s mind all along.

Before we look at these ancient words let’s sing a little about them to prepare our minds.

Song – “Ancient Words”

The suffering of Christ (verses 1-21a)

“1 My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?  Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning? 2 O my God, I cry by day, but You do not answer; And by night, but I find no rest.”  Did He actually feel the presence of His Father leaving Him? Or was it that He felt abandoned by His Father because the suffering had been so much worse than He had imagined and had gone on so long? Did He think God should have allowed Him some relief by now? “My God! My God! Has it not been enough yet?”

“3 Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel.”  Despite what He’s experiencing, despite feeling forsaken, He remains confident that God is holy, incomparably good, righteous, wise, perfect, everything that He is praised to be.

“4 In You our fathers trusted; they trusted and You delivered them. 5 To You they cried out and were rescued; in You they trusted and were not put to shame.”  “You’ve always heard your faithful servants. You’ve always come through for them. No one has trusted you in vain.”

“6 But I am a worm and not a man.”  That’s how he’s being treated. Not like a human being, like a maggot, like a disgusting worthless creature.

Now, some believe a certain species of worm may be in mind here, known as the crimson-grub or scarlet worm, which was common in the old land of Israel. The Hebrew word translated here “worm,”  towla’, occurs 43 times in the OT and only 8 of those times is it translated “worm.”  The rest of the time it’s translated “scarlet” or “crimson”.  So the word could mean either worm, grub, maggot, or the color deep red. It’s believed the reason the word developed either meaning was that in ancient times the way they would obtain crimson dye was from crushing the bodies of a crimson-grub. The natural death of this grub actually has striking similarity to Jesus’ death. When a female crimson-grub was ready to give birth to her young, she would attach her body to the trunk of a tree or a fence post or some piece of wood, and fix herself so firmly and permanently to the tree that you would tear her body apart if you were to try to pull her off. And there she would deposit her eggs under her body, which would then serve as a protective covering. When the larvae hatched they would feed on the living body of the mother. During this process as the mother died, she would excrete a crimson fluid that would cover her body, her young and stain the wood to which she was attached. Supposedly, the stain on this tree (right) is from a crimson worm. So through its bloody looking death on a tree it gave life to many.

Well, Jesus looks out at the people watching Him, continuing in verse 6,  “scorned by mankind and despised by the people.” Despised by those He made, those He has only loved and come to save.

“7 All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads; 8 ‘He trusts in the LORD; let him deliver him; let him rescue him, for he delights in him!’” Isn’t that exactly what the gospel accounts tell us was going on as people passed by the cross? Matthew 27:39-43, “And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads 40 and saying, “You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.” 41 So also the chief priests, with the scribes and elders, mocked him, saying, 42  “He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. 43  He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him. For he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’” They thought what was happening proved Jesus was no friend of God. He has to be a fraud, liar and sorcerer, because look at what God is allowing to happen to Him.

“9 Yet you are he who took me from the womb; you made me trust you at my mother’s breasts. 10 On you was I cast from my birth, and from my mother’s womb you have been my God.”  He looks back on His entire earthly life and says, “I’ve never not trusted you. My entire life you have been my God that I worship and serve. I know You delight in Me, despite what they say and what I’m experiencing.”

“11 Be not far from me, for trouble is near, and there is none to help.”

Perhaps then He looks out at the Jewish leaders and the Roman soldiers, the powerful people, and He says. “Many bulls encompass me; strong bulls of Bashan surround me; 13 they open wide their mouths at me, like a ravening and roaring lion.”  They’re like fierce and merciless beasts with no conscience brutally torturing their victims.

Then perhaps He hangs His head and looks at His body. “I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it is melted within my breast;”  Perhaps He’s thinking about how exhausted and debilitated He is; how He’s totally drained, like water poured out, and unable to move as if His bones were all out of joint. Or perhaps He’s thinking a bit more literally. All the blood and sweat, all the fluids He’s lost – He’s poured out like water. Perhaps His shoulders and other bones are dislocated as He sags on the cross. Perhaps He’s thinking of the deep pain in His chest when He says His heart is like melted wax. It’s struggling to continue to supply blood to the extremities of His body. Physicians who have studied what Jesus would have gone through say that likely due to the amount of blood loss in the scourging and His sustained rapid heartbeat, His pericardium, the membrane surrounding His heart, would have slowly filled with fluid and began to compress His heart. This is believed to be why, when a soldier later thrust a spear into His side and punctured that sac, that out flowed not only blood but a watery fluid.

“15 my strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws; [You remember another of the few statements He made from the cross according to the gospel of John, “I thirst.”] you lay me in the dust of death.” Notice, “YOU lay me in the dust of death.” As Jesus said in John 10, “No man takes my life from me” (John 10:18). These men could do nothing to Him unless He and His Father allowed it. This is a suffering the Father and Son chose to endure.

He looks out at the crowd again. “16 For dogs [filthy savage merciless creatures] encompass me; a company of evildoers encircles me; they have pierced my hands and feet.” That’s remarkable, isn’t it?  Written long before Jesus was born.

“17 I can count all my bones.”  He was naked, and being a thin man and the way He was stretched out on the cross, His bones were visible. “They stare and gloat over me” Luke 23:35 says, “the people stood by, watching, but the rulers scoffed at him“.

“18 They divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.” The only possessions He had on earth. The word “garments” there is plural and refers to His outer garments, and the word translated “clothing” is singular and refers to the tunic He would wear underneath. John 19:23-24, “When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his garments [plural] and divided them into four parts, one part for each soldier; also his tunic. But the tunic [singular] was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom, 24 so they said to one another, ‘Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it to see whose it shall be.’ This was to fulfill the Scripture which says, ‘They divided my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.’“

“19 But you, O Lord, do not be far off! O you my help, come quickly to my aid! 20 Deliver my soul from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dog! 21 Save me from the mouth of the lion!” “Father, deliver Me from the jaws of death.”

I’m going to ask our servers to come up here to pass out the bread. The night before all this, Jesus told His disciples to make it a habit to break bread together and when they do to see in it His body that was given for us. I want to encourage you to do two things as we take of the bread together. First, as you take it and eat it, let God our Father and our Lord Jesus hear your heart to say, “I know that it should have been my body on that cross. I know that You suffered for me that I might be forgiven and to change my sinful heart. And I accept and I thank you and I love you.”

Second, look around, as I think Jesus intended us to because this was originally a meal across a table where you look at each other. Look around and see who else Jesus loved so much that He gave His body for them. Watch who else expresses they believe and appreciate that Jesus died for them by taking and eating the bread. May it impress upon us that these people mean everything to Jesus, that this is His family, our family, and that we honor Him and do His will by loving one another as He’s loved us.

Bread…

The Glories to Follow (verses 21b-31)

Psalm 22 suddenly takes a dramatic turn in verse 21. After calling on God to deliver Him, this declaration, “You have rescued me from the horns of the wild oxen!” Does the Psalm skip ahead in time to when His suffering is over? Maybe. But I picture this as Jesus still in the midst of suffering but thinking with confidence about what will soon happen. Deliverance is so certain He can speak of it as having already happened.

“22 I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will praise you.” If these are His thoughts on the cross, He’s thinking when all this over of going to Peter and John, Matthew, Thomas, His brother James and others, and proving to them the great power and love and faithfulness of God.

He thinks of the impact His resurrection should have on those who fear the Lord, that is those who acknowledge His greatness, power and control and take His words seriously. How should we respond to the deliverance of Jesus from death? “23 You who fear the Lord, praise him! All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him, and stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel! 24 For he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, and he has not hidden his face from him, but has heard, when he cried to him.” The resurrection assures us that God was pleased with Jesus. He was no liar. He is indeed our savior and His promises are true. And it assures us, that if we trust and serve Him, follow in the steps of Jesus, He will not hide His face from us. He will hear our cries and deliver us from suffering and death. I Corinthians 15:20, “In fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.” And for that we owe Him praise and glory with all our hearts forever.

“25 From you comes my praise in the great congregation; my vows I will perform before those who fear him.”  Often in the OT when someone prayed for deliverance they would also make vows. “Lord, if you will deliver me, I will do this and this.” Perhaps Jesus is thinking about doing all the things He promised He would do after His resurrection; send of the Holy Spirit, build His church, intercede for us, rule the nations righteously and justly, prepare a place for us, come again, raise the dead, set things right, put an end to evil, establish the kingdom of God in its fullness.

“26 The afflicted [or it could be “the meek” or “humble”] shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek him shall praise the LORD! May your hearts live forever!” This, my brothers and sisters, is what the suffering and resurrection of Jesus means for us. If these are His thoughts on the cross then in His suffering He was thinking about the benefits for us. Because of His suffering the humble shall eat and be satisfied… more than just physically. All that our souls hunger for, forgiveness, righteousness, meaning, purpose, peace, salvation from death; the humble, we will receive and be satisfied. Those who seek God, will not only find Him, but end up praising Him for His amazing grace. And our hearts will live forever!

I’m going ask our servers to come back up here to pass the cups. Jesus told His disciples when you share a drink together, to see in it His blood of the new covenant that was poured out for us. As you take it, let Him hear your heart say, “I believe your blood was shed for my sins and I thank you and I love you.” Look around at who says the same. And let me encourage you to think also about a couple other things.

Covenant – Jesus mentioned “My blood of the new covenant.” A covenant is a binding deal, a pact, like a contract. The blood of Christ seals a deal between us and God. Our part of the deal is to be disciples of Jesus, to listen and learn from Him and try to be like Him. God has bound Himself in the deal to forgive us, to take us as His beloved children and bless us forever.

Also, try to imagine the great fulfillment this meal foreshadows. It’s a frequent picture of what God’s people will enjoy together one day. Jesus spoke of us reclining at the table with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the prophets in the kingdom. At the last supper He told His disciples, “I will not drink the fruit of the vine with you again until that day when I drink it new with you in My Father’s kingdom” (Matthew 26:29). Oh think of the conversation at that table, think of the love and the joy and the fellowship and the wonder and the excitement.

Cup…

Toward the end of Psalm 22, I think our Lord thinks about the ultimate result: the world that God desires which His death and resurrection are a vital part of accomplishing. He thinks of the Kingdom of God in its fullness when the world is set right, when the will of God is done on earth as it is in heaven. “27 All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship before you.” One day there will be a world where everyone everywhere will serve and worship the God who made us and saved us.

“28 For kingship belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nations.” It is His place to be worshiped and served by all His creation and one day that’s how it will be.

“29 All the prosperous of the earth [which I think will be everyone in the world to come. We will all be prosperous then and we will] eat and worship; before him shall bow all who go down to the dust, even the one who could not keep himself alive.” Because God will do for those who trust Him what He did for Jesus. If we go down into the dust before He comes, then when He comes, the God who gave us life once will make us stand again in strong, healthy, this time immortal and glorious, bodies. And we will bow and worship our wonderful God.

Then the Lord thinks of what will happen toward that end. “30 Posterity shall serve him; it shall be told of the Lord to the coming generation; 31 they shall come and proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn, that he has done it.”  I hear Jesus thinking about the transformation of many into servants of God and the spread of the good news from generation to generation, the good news of God’s righteousness and the salvation He’s provided through His Son.

And notice how Psalm 22 ends. “He has done it.” “He’s accomplished it.” “He has finished it.” Do you remember Jesus’ final words from the cross according to John 19:30? “It is finished.” The hard part is done. The sacrifice to atone for our sins and demonstrate His great love for us is done. If He’s finished the hard part, then we can be sure He will finish the rest of His great project. He will have His huge family who loves Him and loves one another, in a world without evil or death ….

I am going ask our servers to come back up here to pass the baskets, so we have an opportunity to give this morning to express our love for the Lord and to further the good news in the world.

Basket…

Songs…

Invitation…

Closing prayer…

-James Williams