The Song of the Savior | Psalm 22
Brian Hedges | April 8, 2020
Thanks for joining us tonight for this first live-stream. Before we get started, I do just want to give a shout-out to Josh Townsend, who has been working so hard to get us connected, and all the technology to do this. I hope many will be tuning in tonight, and if you’re not live-streaming it with us that you’ll be catching this in the video.
For the last several weeks, we’ve been looking together at the book of Psalms, and we’ve looked at a number of different psalms and how these psalms teach us to deal with our emotions. We’ve called this series “Psalms for Troubled Times,” and we’ve talked about the emotions of fear, distress, discontentment—even impatience, last week, as we were in Psalm 13.
But this week, of course, is Holy Week. We’re leading up to Good Friday and then Easter Sunday, so I want to just take a slightly different focus this evening and look at Psalm 22. So if you’re going to follow along in your Bible, as I hope you will, I hope you’ll turn there to Psalm 22. We’re going to read it here in just a moment.
Psalm 22 is one of the greatest of the psalms. It’s a messianic psalm, a psalm that looks prophetically to the sufferings of Jesus Christ. It’s been called the fifth Gospel by some writers. It’s been likened to Isaiah 53 by others. Luther said it was to be “the most highly prized of all the psalms.” Someone described Psalm 22 as “the Gospel according to David.” Derek Kidner calls it “the psalm of the cross.”
So this is a psalm that I think warrants our attention this week during Holy Week. In fact, Spurgeon said that when we come to Psalm 22, we should take the shoes from off our feet, because if there’s any place in Scripture that’s holy ground, it is Psalm 22.
I just want to begin by reading this psalm to us, and then just make three pretty simple observations about the psalm. Psalm 22; it’s 31 verses. I’m going to read all of it, beginning in verse 1.
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer,
and by night, but I find no rest.
“Yet you are holy,
enthroned on the praises of Israel.
In you our fathers trusted;
they trusted, and you delivered them.
To you they cried and were rescued;
in you they trusted and were not put to shame.
“But I am a worm and not a man,
scorned by mankind and despised by the people.
All who see me mock me;
they make mouths at me; they wag their heads;
‘He trusts in the Lord; let him deliver him;
let him rescue him, for he delights in him!’
“Yet you are he who took me from the womb;
you made me trust you at my mother's breasts.
On you was I cast from my birth,
and from my mother's womb you have been my God.
Be not far from me,
for trouble is near,
and there is none to help.
“Many bulls encompass me;
strong bulls of Bashan surround me;
they open wide their mouths at me,
like a ravening and roaring lion.
“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;
my strength is dried up like a potsherd,
and my tongue sticks to my jaws;
you lay me in the dust of death.
“For dogs encompass me;
a company of evildoers encircles me;
they have pierced my hands and feet—
I can count all my bones—
they stare and gloat over me;
they divide my garments among them,
and for my clothing they cast lots.
“But you, O Lord, do not be far off!
O you my help, come quickly to my aid!
Deliver my soul from the sword,
my precious life from the power of the dog!
Save me from the mouth of the lion!
You have rescued me from the horns of the wild oxen!
“I will tell of your name to my brothers;
in the midst of the congregation I will praise you:
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!
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.
“From you comes my praise in the great congregation;
my vows I will perform before those who fear him.
The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied;
those who seek him shall praise the Lord!
May your hearts live forever!
“All the ends of the earth shall remember
and turn to the Lord,
and all the families of the nations
shall worship before you.
For kingship belongs to the Lord,
and he rules over the nations.
“All the prosperous of the earth eat and worship;
before him shall bow all who go down to the dust,
even the one who could not keep himself alive.
Posterity shall serve him;
it shall be told of the Lord to the coming generation;
they shall come and proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn,
that he has done it.”
This is God’s word, Psalm 22.
I want you to see three things from this psalm. This obviously a long psalm, 31 verses, and we can’t look at every verse in detail, but what I want you to see are three things about Jesus. I want you to see that:
I. Jesus Is the One Who Suffers with Us
II. Jesus Is the One Who Suffers for Us
III. Jesus Is the One Who Leads Us in Worship
These are three things that I think this psalm teaches us.
I. Jesus Is the One Who Suffers with Us
Now, every so often I have people ask me a question. Sometimes it’s one of my children, sometimes it’s a person in the church. This is the kind of question that will come up often in our conversations with those who are cynical or skeptical or who do not believe, and the question is simply this: “If there’s a God and if he is there, why do people suffer? Why does God allow suffering in the world?”
It’s a difficult question. It’s a question that not only Christians must wrestle with, but every philosophy, every religion of the world, has to wrestle with the problem of human suffering.
Answering that question, of course, requires a very complex and nuanced answer, but here’s just part of the answer with Christianity. It’s to understand two things: that suffering, first of all, is an alien invasion into God’s creation that is, in the account of Scripture, the result of human rebellion and sin. In other words, suffering is not a good thing in and of itself. Scripture itself treats suffering as an evil, something that was not part of God’s good intention, his original design for the world. That’s the first thing.
Secondly, that suffering is addressed by God supremely at the cross through the suffering of his own Son. This is an amazing thing about the Christian perspective on suffering. It’s very different than many of the other philosophies of the world. Christianity says that when we think about suffering, whatever God’s final intentions and purposes are in allowing suffering, he did not make himself exempt from it, but in the person of the Son he actually suffers with us.
Theologian D.A. Carson, in a wonderful book on suffering, puts it like this. He says, “When Christians think seriously about evil and suffering, one of the paramount reasons we are so sure that God is to be trusted is because he sends his Son to suffer cruelly on our behalf. Jesus Christ the Son, who is to be worshipped as God, God’s own agent in creation, suffered an excruciatingly odious death. The God on whom we rely knows what suffering is all about, not merely in the way that God knows everything, but by experience.”
Our God, the incarnate God, Jesus Christ, has suffered with us. You see that in Psalm 22. Virtually every Christian who reads Psalm 22 is going to recognize in Psalm 22 the sufferings of the Messiah, and it is right that we do so, because the Gospel writers themselves in the New Testament understood Psalm 22 in that way. In fact, Jesus seems to have understood Psalm 22 in that way as well.
We see this in the Gospel of Matthew, and I want to read you just a few verses from the Passion narrative in Matthew 27, and show you how both Jesus in his words from the cross and Matthew as he narrates the story of the crucifixion connect it to Psalm 22. I’m just going to read 12 verses from Matthew 27, beginning in verse 35.
“When they had crucified him, they divided his garments among them by casting lots,” Psalm 22:18. “Then they sat down and kept watch over him there, and over his head they put the charge against him which read, ‘This is Jesus, the King of the Jews.’ The two robbers who were crucified with him, one on the right and one on the left, and those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads,” Psalm 22:7, “and saying, ‘You who would destroy the temple and rebuilt it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.’ So also the chief priests with the scribes and elders mocked him, saying, ‘He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the king of Israel; let him come down from the cross, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God; let God deliver him now if he desires him [Psalm 22:8], for he said, “I am the Son of God.”’ The robbers who were crucified with him also reviled him in the same way.
“Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. About the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, ‘Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?’ (that is, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ [Psalm 22:1]).”
As you can see, Psalm 22 is just embedded in the narrative of Christ’s passion and crucifixion in Matthew 27. When you read Psalm 22 in that light, when you read it through that lens, as the suffering of the Messiah, you begin to see the full scope of Jesus’ suffering with us. His suffering was, of course, physical, and there are physical descriptions of his suffering in Psalm 22. This is amazing! Written hundreds of years before the crucifixion, and yet describing what looks like a crucifixion in great detail, even to the piercing of Christ’s hands and feet in verse 16.
The suffering was also social, relational, as Jesus was mocked and scorned and derided and persecuted by others. You see that in verses 7-8 and verses 12 and 16. His garments are divided, he’s stripped naked on the cross, verse 18.
Of course, you see it in the emotional and the spiritual dimension of his suffering. The psalm begins with the cry of dereliction, Jesus’ cry from the cross as he quoted Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
You take all of those things together, Psalm 22 linked up with the gospel narratives, and at least part of the answer to the question of human suffering— “Why do people suffer if there really is a God?” —at least part of that answer is in the suffering of Christ, the Son of God, on the cross, who did something. He suffered with us in order to do something about human suffering.
In Hebrews 2:9 we read that Jesus was “crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.” In a very real sense, Jesus the Son of God had to suffer. He had to suffer, he had to taste death, in order to bring about God’s purposes.
There’s a wonderful poem, and I’ve quoted this many times in our church, a poem that was written by a man who saw all of the horrors of trench warfare in World War I. Having experienced that, having seen his comrades mowed down by the machine guns, having seen the travesty of war (and some of you, if you saw the recent film 1917, you got a fresh picture of that in your mind); this man, having seen all of that, yet survived. He wrote a poem called “Jesus of the Scars.”
One of the lines, one of the stanzas, goes like this:
“The other gods were strong, but thou wast weak;
They rode, but thou didst stumble to a throne.
But to our wounds only God’s wounds can speak,
And not a god has wounds but ours alone.”
Whatever we say about suffering, this is one of the unique things that Christians have to say about suffering: that we have a God, that we serve a King, that we worship someone who has suffered with us. He is a High Priest who sympathizes with us in our weaknesses, because he was tempted in every point as we are, yet without sin, Hebrews 4:15.
“The founder of our salvation has been made perfect through suffering,” Hebrews 2:10. Jesus knows our pain because he suffers with us. Psalm 22 shows us that.
II. Jesus Is the One Who Suffers for Us
But not only does it show us that Jesus is the one who suffers with us, it also shows us that Jesus is the one who suffers for us. Let me read those first two verses again, perhaps the most well-known verses from this psalm.
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest.”
This is the opening lament of this psalm, this series of laments, alternating laments with prayers of trust in God. But it all begins with this question. In some ways, it’s a question that is never answered in this psalm. There are some remarkable features of this psalm that make it unique. There are many psalms of lament, but there are some things that are not in this psalm that often show up in the other psalms.
For example, there’s never a confession of sin in this psalm, unlike many of the other psalms that are lament psalms but also penitential psalms, such as Psalm 51 or Psalm 32 or Psalm 130. No confession of sin here, no acknowledgement of sin here.
There are no imprecations against his enemies. Many times when you read David’s psalms, he calls attention to his enemies, he calls attention to his persecutors. But in the same breath he calls God’s justice down upon them. That’s not what you have in Psalm 22.
In Psalm 22 there’s no indication of illness. It doesn’t seem that he’s ill, even though he’s near death. It’s rather that he is being persecuted to the point of suffering. In fact, Derek Kidner, who acknowledges David’s authorship of this psalm, makes this comment. He says, “No incident recorded of David can begin to account for this. It is not a description of illness, but an execution.”
It’s true that David sometimes was threatened with his life, but he never experienced anything like this. The only explanation is that David, speaking under the influence and the direction, the guidance of the Holy Spirit, spoke prophetically of the sufferings of another, another who would suffer in such a way as to cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
It is the greatest aspect of his suffering. We’ve seen his physical suffering, we know that, we know the suffering of the crucifixion. We’ve heard those descriptions. We know that there was mental anguish, that there was emotional anguish. But the greatest aspect of the suffering was the God-forsakenness, his sense of being abandoned by God.
We have to ask the question, “Why was Jesus forsaken by God as he hung there on the cross?” The answer of the New Testament, uniformly, again and again, is that he suffered there for us. He not only suffered with us, he suffered for us.
1 Timothy 2:5-6 says, “...there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all.” 1 John 4:10, “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” Jesus himself says that the “Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” He says, “I am the good shepherd, and I give my life for the sheep, I lay down my life for the sheep.” Why did he suffer? He suffered for us. That is, he suffered in our behalf. He took our place. The judgment that we deserved, he received. That’s the answer of Scripture.
Sinclair Ferguson, a wonderful theologian whom I love, says that “the price of our reconciliation was Christ’s alienation.” He was alienated from the Father, he was abandoned by the Father, forsaken by the Father. In fact, the Father’s wrath poured out on him. This great exchange, as Christ takes our sins, as he takes our woes, as he takes our iniquities, as he takes our punishment, as he takes our condemnation! Why does he do it? So that we can be free from condemnation.
We sing this in our hymns and in our songs, don’t we? Just last week we sang together, Redeemer Church, some of us singing here and most of us singing, I hope, in your living rooms. We sang these words,
“How deep the Father’s love for us,
How vast beyond all measure,
That he should give his only Son
To make a wretch his treasure.
How great the pain of searing loss!
The Father turns his face away
As wounds which mar the Chosen One
Bring many sons to glory.”
Why does the Father turn his face away? He does it so that through the wounds of Christ we can be redeemed. That’s what we celebrate during Holy Week. That’s what we remember, that’s what we reflect on as we move towards the cross, Good Friday, and then the empty tomb on Easter Sunday.
This psalm shows us the suffering of Christ. He suffers with us and he suffers for us.
III. Jesus Is the One Who Leads Us in Worship
But get this: the psalm does not end with suffering. The psalm alternates between lament and prayers of confidence from verses 1-21, and then you get to verse 22, and everything changes. The last ten verses of this psalm are very different than the first part of the psalm. I think this is significant. Look at verse 22. He says, “I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will praise you.”
That’s why this psalm points us to Jesus as the one who not only suffers with us and for us but also as the one who leads us in worship, or who calls us to worship. I say this because of how this verse is used in Hebrews 2. I’ve already quoted from Hebrews 2, but here is another passage where Psalm 22 is used by the New Testament writers. Listen to what it says, Hebrews 2:10-12.
“For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all thing exist, in bringing many sons to glory should make the Founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one origin. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers, saying, ‘I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise.’” He’s quoting Psalm 22:22.
John Calvin, commenting on that verse, called Christ “our heavenly choirmaster who tunes our hearts to sing God’s praises.” These verses, in other words, have in view Christ, not just as the suffering one, but Christ as the one who triumphs over his sufferings, and in his resurrection and ascension now gathers around him a family, a congregation of redeemed worshippers.
This is always how genuine worship works, and Christ is the leader. He’s the one who calls us to worship, he’s the ultimate worship leader. As you’ll see in this passage, he calls an ever-increasing, widening circle of people into the worship of God. Let’s just notice this in the final paragraph of this psalm.
First of all, he calls those who fear the Lord, fellow Israelites. Look at verses 23-24. “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! For he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, and he has not hidden his from him, but has heard when he cried to him.”
You know, there’s a very real sense in which Jesus, when he hung on the cross, was not heard from the Father for a few hours; but he was ultimately heard. He was ultimately heard, and Hebrews even tells us that. He was heard and God was pleased with what the Son did, and therefore raised him from the dead. Because Jesus suffered there for us we can have the confidence that he does not despise us when we pray in our affliction, either. When we call out to him with words of lament, following the pattern of Jesus in praying the psalms; when we do that, we can do so with great confidence that God will hear.
The circle widens in verses 25-26 to the great congregation, the assembled people of God. Look at verse 25. “From you comes my praise in the great congregation; my vows I will perform before those who fear him. The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek him shall praise the Lord. May your hearts live forever!”
I know a lot of us, as we go through this difficult season together, we’re seeking the Lord and we’re calling out to God. We’re asking him to remove the affliction, we’re asking him to heal the sick, to protect families, and so on. Here’s a verse that reminds us that the afflicted shall eat and be satisfied. God hears the prayers of his people, and it’s one of the reasons that we can worship him.
Then the circle widens even more, verses 27-29, to the ends of the earth, the families of the nations, language that calls to mind God’s great promise to Abraham, “Through you and through your seed, your son, I will bless all the families of the earth.”
Listen to this, verse 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. For kingship belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nations. All the prosperous of the earth shall eat and worship; before him shall bow all who go down to the dust, even the one who could not keep himself alive.”
You just see there’s this growing company of worshippers as Christ, our heavenly choirmaster, our great worship leader, calls people into the worship of God.
Finally, the psalm ends by looking to future generations, verses 30-31. “Posterity shall serve him. It shall be told of the Lord to the coming generation; they shall come and proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn, that he has done it.”
Some of you maybe saw, several years ago, there was a YouTube video of the lone dancer. It’s this guy who’s on the side of a hill, side of a mountain, and there’s music going. He’s just kind of—it looks like he’s living in his own little world. Everybody else is sitting on the grass, but he’s there and he’s just dancing.
He dances and he dances and he dances, and then one person gets up and joins him, and then a third person comes and joins him. It’s just remarkable to watch this video. By the end of the video, virtually everybody has joined! There’s this great throng of people who are dancing, and it’s all because this one guy started dancing first.
In a very real way, Jesus is the one who leads us in the worship of God, sort of like that. He’s the first guy on the dance floor, he’s the first one to lead us into the presence of God, he’s the one who calls us into relationship with God, the lead singer, the lead worshipper in praise of his Father. How does he do it? How does he beckon us into this lifestyle of worshipping God? He does it through his own personal sacrifice. He does it by dying for us, he does it by suffering with us, suffering for us, becoming our substitute, offering himself as the priest as well as the sacrifice, he does it by conquering our enemies, by overcoming death, by defeating our foes, and then by setting us free from the things that bind us. That’s what Psalm 22 is about.
As we just reflect this week, moving again towards Good Friday and then towards Easter Sunday, let’s reflect on what Christ has done. Perhaps you’re listening in and you’ve never really thought of that personally for yourself. You know the story of the gospel, you know that Jesus died on the cross, but have you ever thought, have you ever seriously considered why he died? That he died for sinners? “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptance,” the apostle Paul says, “that Christ came into the world to die for sinners, of whom I am the foremost.”
Have you recognized that for yourself, that Christ died for sinners? If you see yourself as a sinner and in need of salvation, you look to Christ, it means that Christ will save you. I hope that you will do that this evening if you never have before. Let’s pray together.
Our gracious Father, our sovereign Lord, our Redeemer, we thank you for your mercy given to us through Christ. We’ve only scratched the surface of this wonderful psalm this evening, but we’ve seen enough to see that Christ endured what we never could have endured. He took the punishment we deserved so that we could be drawn into the family, the worshipping family, the great congregation of the redeemed. He took alienation so that we could get reconciliation. He took our judgment so that we could receive your grace, your mercy, and your favor. We thank you for it right now, we trust in it, we abandon trust in ourselves and we look to Christ, who suffered for us.
Father, I pray that this week, as we think about that final week of Jesus’ life, as we think about his passion, as we think about his betrayal and his trials, his condemnation, his crucifixion; as we think about all that he suffered for us, may we do so with gratitude in our hearts, may we do so humbled over our sins, broken for our sins. May we do so with repentance and with faith, and may we with great joy take our place among the family of the redeemed, that great throng who worship around your throne. Lord, work in our hearts what is pleasing in your sight. Do it for Jesus’ sake, we pray in his name and for his sake, Amen.
Brian G. Hedges
