Sermons
Summer In The Psalms Pt 5 - Suffering And Salvation
(upbeat music) - My name is Daniel. I'm one of the pastors here usually. I'm helping to lead worship, but it's my privilege this morning to get to bring the sermon. We're continuing on in our summer in the Psalms series where we're looking into the Psalms to see in the Bible's own hymnal, the gospel. And I've really been enjoying doing this. And today, our passage is gonna be Psalm 22, a passage famous for suffering and anguish and sorrow. It's one of the most famous passages of the scriptures, primarily because Jesus cries the first line of this psalm out on the cross. It's a go-to passage for evangelists and apologists and from a Christological and a prophetic standpoint, it's incredible. It's perhaps only exceeded in its prophetic clarity by Isaiah 53. And the similarity between what David is writing and what Christ experienced is undeniable and it is supernatural. And we as Christ Community Church believe that all scripture is God breathed. It's penned by men who are carried along by the Holy Spirit, but most of that wasn't done while folks were caught up in a trance or having open visions, though some of that did happen. It was mainly written by people because they thought what they were writing was important. And we believe that God inspired that in them. So we shouldn't think David sat down one day and thought I'm going to write a song about the Messiah and the suffering that he'll endure hundreds of years from now. I want to kind of provide him a script to read that will ensure that everyone knows that this whole redemptive history thing is connected. David was writing this psalm in a particular moment of difficulty and he is processing his pain and his fear like so many others have in the past through poetry and song. So David isn't explicitly referencing Jesus when he wrote it, but Jesus reveals on the cross that Psalm 22 is really his song that was penned through his servant David. And though he is only recorded crying out the first line of the lyrics, Jesus is calling to the mind of all of those listening the entire content of this psalm. And we're familiar with something like this in our culture. Hymns in Christian culture are usually titled by the first verse of the first line of the first verse or the first line of the refrain. And so if I were to sing a line like a mighty fortress is our God, we all know that the Lutherans among us would get overexcited, so I'm not gonna do it. (congregation laughing) But it immediately calls to mind the stately melody and the powerful theology of that song. Or if I were to sing, she's just a small town girl. Most of you would probably wanna sing. And you would know that that small town girl took a midnight train going anywhere. So we're gonna look together. I didn't even pay 'em to do that. So we're gonna look together at this psalm. So the next time, the next time we hear my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? We will all know what Christ was referencing. And we're gonna look quickly at four important categories here. If I had my way, this psalm, we would break it up into four individual sermons, but we can't do that. So I promise I will be brief on these four categories. The first, if you're taking notes, is personal anguish. The second is covenantal commitment. The third is prophetic connection. And the fourth is eschatological revelation. Right, and before you groan and say, great, Pastor Daniel is once again preaching on a super heavy topic of suffering and anguish and sorrow. I need you to know, this has been one of the most encouraging passages I have ever studied. I found myself surprised by how uplifting this passage is in light of the cross. So we're gonna read the first 18 verses together. And I know we don't have the big screen. So I wanna encourage you to listen well and read along if you have your Bible or your device. Psalm 22, reading in the CSB, it says, my God, my God, why have you abandoned me? Why are you so far from my deliverance and far from my words of groaning? My God, I cried by day, but you do not answer. By night, yet I have no rest. But you are holy and thrown on the praises of Israel. Our ancestors trusted in you. They trusted in you and you rescued them. They cried to you and were set free. They trusted in you and were not disgraced. But I am a worm and not a man. Scorned by mankind and despised by people. Everyone who sees me mocks me. They sneer and they shake their heads. He relies on the Lord. Let him save him. Let the Lord rescue him since he takes pleasure in him. It was you who brought me out of the womb, making me secure at my mother's breast. I was given over to you at birth. You have been my God from my mother's womb. Don't be far from me because distress is near and there is no one to help. Many bulls surround me. Strong ones of bastion encircle me. They open their mouths against me like lions, mauling and roaring. And I am poured out like water. And all my bones are disjointed. My heart is like wax melting within me. My strength is dried up like baked clay. My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. You put me in the dust of death for dogs have surrounded me. A gang of evil doers has closed in on me. They pierced my hands in my feet. I can count all my bones. People look and they stare at me. They divided my garments among themselves and they cast lots for my clothing. So we're gonna begin here with the most prominent category which is personal anguish. We have no idea what David was going through when he penned these verses. But it is clear that it was awful. He is distraught and tormented. He is anxious and confused and he is in physical pain. He's being assaulted on all sides and his physical and his emotional resources are spent. We look in verse six, he calls himself a worm, not a man. This is the man who wrote Psalm eight which we discussed a couple of weeks ago. Praising God for the marvelous nature of a human being. He said that God has made man a little lower than the angels yet here he's saying that his experience has made him the lowest of all creatures, the one who eats the muck and the waste of more noble beings. A once glorious vessel has been shattered into useless pottery shards shards that will soon be crushed back into the dust. And he's become the object of public ridicule and scorn, his suffering isn't simply private but it's on display for all to see. Not only do they physically harm him, but they humiliate him. They taught him about his beliefs. They taught him about his predicament. They taught him about God's failure to rescue him. And this is the worst of all. The God who once a comforter has ceased all comfort. The God who fellowshiped with David as he walked alone tending his father's flocks is now absent. The God who had sent a prophet to honor him as king is now silent. The God who had delivered him from the hands of Goliath and Saul has now delivered him into the hands of a brutal enemy and many of us know this pain. Some of us know it physically. Some of us know it mentally and emotionally. Some of us know it spiritually in our darkest depths. Whether those depths were caused by something we brought upon ourselves or it's something being done to us in our darkest depths, we have cried out to God and it seems like God has abandoned us to our plight. The heavens above us, which once were filled with warmth and kindness have turned to bronze. And the thundering silence of God makes the suffering all the more terrible. In those moments, many of us give into the temptation to just stop crying out. If God is going to remain silent, so will I. If God is going to abandon me to this hopelessness, then I will abandon my attempts to call upon him. But David is modeling the exact opposite of this. He is refusing to embrace the lie that his prayers are futile, though he offers them day after day and night after night without answer. He refuses to embrace the lie that God is just some transcendent, disassociated, impervious ruler who is dispassionate towards or maybe even unable to hear the pleas of his subjects. No, he prays as though God is listening and interested. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far away from my suffering? He doesn't dress up the language. He doesn't obfuscate or diminish his own pain and frustration. He cries out honestly and passionately expressing his anguish and confusion to God. And this is the model for us. We are to take our pain to the Lord over and over and over and over again. Jeff preached last week that it's the fool who says in his heart that there is no God. But our culture screams to us. It is the fool who believes there is a God and it is foolish and undignified to cry out to him. They say cry out to the government. They say cry out to money, cry out to social media, cry out to yourself, take your anguish to them and seek relief. These are the things that can actually do something about your distress. These are your true deliverers. And I must confess that my heart too often believes this lie and my cries of distress to God, full silent. But this psalm is telling us different. I know we have spent the last few months pointing out all of David's flaws and failures, but he is still a model of a man after God's own heart. He unapologetically and even brazenly takes his distress to the only one who can truly deliver him. And when confronted with the lie that his crying out is useless or foolish or undignified, David cries out all the more, have mercy on me, rescue me, deliver me. And even more than that, Christ's cry on the cross confirms that this is the way that we are to engage with God when our lives are filled with anguish and trial. Do not shrink back from taking your anger and your sorrow and your pain and your confusion to the Lord. Whether it's a mess of your own making or pure injustice being perpetrated against you, God can deal with your tone. God can deal with your doubts. He can deal with your sin. Drop the facade and pray until you think you cannot pray anymore and then pray some more. Don't allow the pain and the whisper of the world or the subtle deceptions of the devil to cause you to forget who God is or the promises he has made to all those who belong to him. Which brings us to our next category. Covenantal commitments. Covenantal commitments. To be fair, again, this would require an entire sermon to really flesh out and Pastor Ryan would probably do a great job with that. But I just wanna make one quick observation here. David is not calling out to God on the merits of his own morality or from his noble position as king or on the basis of his own good works. He's crying out to God as a member of God's covenant community. He's crying out as a faithful Israelite. He's crying out to God because of who God is and the promises he's made to his people. Look at what he says here in verses three through five. He says, but you are holy and thrown on the praises of Israel. Our ancestors trusted in you. They trusted and you rescued them. They cried to you and were set free. They trusted in you and they were not disgraced. Later in verses nine through 11, he says, it was you who brought me out of the womb, making me secure at my mother's breast. I was given over to you at birth. You have been my God from my mother's womb. So don't be far from me because distress is near and there's no one to help. David is appealing to God's covenant faithfulness as creator, sustainer, and deliverer of Israel. And we see this time and time again throughout the scriptures. Our confidence in the promises of God is not rooted in our sincerity of belief. It's not rooted in our personal holiness or the works that we undertake on God's behalf. It can only be rooted in God's sincerity, in God's holiness and in the works that God undertakes on our behalf. Listen, I'm all for a meritocracy. I'm all for personal holiness. I'm all for attempting big things for the glory of God. But when we get caught up in the earning of God's favor through those things, earning his deliverance, earning his comfort and affliction, we're falling into the same trap that the sarcastic voices of verses seven and eight have fallen into. As we read it, you can feel the scorn in them. It says, everyone who sees me mocks me, they steer, and they shake their heads, he relies on the Lord. Let the Lord save him, let the Lord rescue him since the Lord takes pleasure in him. It's as if they were saying, if God were really trustworthy, he would save him. Or if David were really worthy of it, God would rescue him. And if we're honest, many times in our affliction and anguish, our own voices join in with that mockery. If only I had believed harder, or done better, or accomplished more, I could be delivered from this torment. God's promises may be true for others, but not for me. God doesn't really take pleasure in me. But my friends, it's not the intensity of our faith, or the quality of our work that saves us from distress. If that were so, the only perfectly faithful man, Jesus Christ, would never have known sorrow or suffering. No, it's the object of our faith that saves us. God himself. With that being said, David is demonstrating his own commitment to the covenant by calling out to Yahweh. He's not calling out to another God. His cries aren't going up to Baal. He's not looking to Asher. He's remaining faithful to the God that he is in covenant with. So, be faithful, bring your personal anguish and distress to God. Because God has communicated his willingness, his intention, and his ability to deliver you. Which brings us to our next category in the Psalm. The prophetic connection. The prophetic connection. Now, we know that David wrote this, though we're unsure about what's specifically. And eventually, the Jews came to look at this Psalm as being descriptive of their own people, and being prophetic of their own people, and their own people suffering. So much so that some sesecular scholars try to discount that it was written by David at all, but really, there's really no good evidence for that. They would say that it was probably written later during the time of exile because of the theme of suffering. But, like I said, there's no reason to doubt that David wrote this. And the Jews had come to see it as being prophetic about the nation of Israel. However, for the New Testament believer, the correlation between this Psalm and Christ's sacrifice, they're undeniable. David writes this a thousand years prior, yet it's as if it was written as a poetic description of Christ's suffering on Calvary. And so we're gonna look just at some of those prophetic descriptions. Most obviously, there is what is known as the cry of dereliction, which Jesus utters on the cross, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And we see that there are these mockers that we've talked about in verses seven through eight, Matthew 27 describes almost verbatim, the exact same thing happening to Christ. We see the description of his physical torment in verses 14 and 15, resulting in total weakness and extreme thirst. He says, I'm poured out like water, and all my bones are disjointed. My heart is like wax melting within me. My strength is dried up like baked clay. My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. You've put me into the dust of death. And in John 19, we see this piteous confession come from the lips of Christ while he's hanging there. I thirst. That thirst was likely brought on from the blood loss, from the brutal scourging that he had endured. And we know that crucifixion was a joint dislocating affair from the burden of him carrying the cross to that cross dropping into place after he'd been secured to it. And then we see in verses 12 through 13, there are these bowls of bashon that encircle him and open their mouths against him. Bashon was a region in Israel of wealth and nobility, and it was notorious for its association with the oppression of or the defiance towards God's favored ones. We know that from the gospels, we know from the gospels that the wealthy religious elites played this out with Jesus, using their words and their influence to condemn him to death in the public spectacle of Roman crucifixion. And we see another animal reference made in verses 16 through 18. It says, for dogs have surrounded me. A gang of evildoers has closed in on me. They pierced my hands and my feet. I can count all my bones. People look and stare at me. They divided my garments among themselves and they cast lots for my clothing. And in Jesus's time, the Gentiles, the Romans were referred to regularly as dogs. And as experts in crucifixions, they surrounded him and pierced him. Literally the word is, they've hollowed out my hands and feet, stripped him of his clothes so that all could see his body and his blood and his exposed bones. And then they gambled over who would take his garments home as a prize. Now, there are many explicit connections. There are many more implied prophetic connections, but we don't have time to run through all that. But it is to these prophetic connections that Jesus is calling our minds when he cries out, "Eloy, eloy, la masabakthani. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Now, there was some confusion when Jesus uttered that. You see, in the Jewish mind, Elijah was the precursor to the arrival of the Messiah. And speaking this psalm and Aramaic, as Jesus would have, it opened the door to some confusion. They initially think he's calling for Elijah. Or maybe he's calling for Elijah so that the Messiah will then come and rescue him. But we know that Jesus has already identified John the Baptist as the Elijah that was to come. And Jesus is currently being executed for his claims of being the Messiah. So Jesus is making it plain here that he is the one, the psalm was ultimately written about. He is the true David and the true son of David. He is the true Israelite and the true Israel. He is the true covenant keeper. And he's also the initiator of a new covenant. He is filling up the prophetic meaning of Psalm 22 here. But we have to ask, if Jesus was this fulfillment, the promised Messiah, why is he referencing such a bummer of the psalm about God abandoning his anointed king? Because the psalm doesn't end in verse 18. Though too frequently, if that's where we kind of stop our meditation upon it. And this brings us to our last category. The eschatological implications, right? Eschatology is the study of the end times. The way the things are all gonna wrap up in the end. And so we're gonna read verses 19 through 31. But you, Lord, don't be far away from me. My strength, come quickly to me. Rescue my life from the sword, my only life from the power of these dogs. Save me from the lion's mouth, from the horns of the wild oxen. You have answered me. I will proclaim your name to my brothers and sisters. I will praise you in the assembly. You who fear the Lord, praise him. All you descendants of Jacob, praise him, honor him. All you descendants of Israel revere him, for he has not despised, or abhorred the torment of the oppressed. He did not hide his face from him, but listened when he cried to him for help. I will give praise in the great assembly because of you. I will fulfill my vows before those who fear you. The humble 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. All the families of the nations will bow down before you. But before him, even the one who, sorry, I'm lost. I looked up for my Bible and there's so many words. Sorry, what verse are we in? - 28. - 28. So I'm starting back in 27. All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord. All the families of the nations will bow down before you. For kingship belongs to the Lord. He rules the nations. All who prosper on earth will eat and bow down. All those who go down to the dust will kneel before him. Even the one who cannot preserve his life. Their descendants will serve him. The next generation will be told about the Lord. They will come and declare his righteousness to a people yet to be born. They will declare what he has done. This is incredible. Look at what happens in the second half of the psalm to those first three categories we've looked at. Personal anguish. The personal anguish and abandonment described in verses one through 18 has turned here into rescue and rejoicing. Look what it says in 19 and 21, 19 through 21. But you Lord, don't be far away. My strength, come quickly to help me. Rescue me from the sword. My only life from the power of these dogs. Save me from the lion's mouth, from the horns of the wild oxen. You answered me. Later in 24, he has not despised or abhorred the torment of the oppressed. He did not hide his face from him, but he listened to him when he cried for help. Though David experienced genuine suffering, he wasn't genuinely forsaken. God listened. God listened and he rescued him. And though Jesus experienced ultimate suffering, the wrath of God for sin being poured out of him and the on him and the bitterness of death, God did not ultimately forsake him. God vindicated him and honored him by raising him up from the dead in incorruptible glory. And what happens to the covenantal commitments? The covenant promises that the sufferer clung to in the first half of this song have been proven to be true and come to fruition in the second half. David has been rescued and he is now a man on a mission. He is recommitted to and revitalized in his commitment to the covenant. He says in verses 22 and 23, I will proclaim your name to my brothers and sisters. I will praise you in the assembly. You who fear the Lord praise him. All you descendants of Jacob, honor him. All you descendants of Israel revere him. Later in 25, he says, I will give praise in the great assembly because of you. I will fulfill my vows before those who fear you. David clung to the promises of God in his covenant with his people. And though they were tested in suffering, his David's deliverance produces a deeper commitment to the God that he earlier felt abandoned by. And Christ's suffering and death demonstrates God's commitment to us in the new covenant. His commitment to deliver us from the power of sin and death and to make us a people who worship in spirit and in truth wherever we go. His commitment to make us a light to the nations. And what happens with the prophetic connections here in the second half? Prophecy is not just fulfilled in the suffering and the death of Christ, but it's fulfilled in the expansion of his blessed dominion to the ends of the earth by the inauguration of the king of all the nations on Calvary. What was written over the head of Jesus on the cross when he cried out? Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews. What languages were those words written in? Aramaic, Greek and Latin. And what do those three languages represent to the person in Jerusalem at that time? They represented the tongue of God's people, the tongue of the marketplace and the prevailing culture and the tongue of the political empire that had conquered the known world. Don't miss this. Though that sign was posted in order to spite him and to strike fear into the hearts of anyone who would defy the prevailing powers, it ironically served as a herald of the truth. It was a herald of the truth found in verses 27 and 28. All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord. All the families of the nations will bow down before you for kingship belongs to the Lord. He rules the nations. And as if to give proof of this, immediately after his death, what happens? The veil of the temple is torn. The faithful dead rise up and walk around and the Roman centurion confesses that Christ, not Caesar, is the true Son of God. No longer is the manifest presence of God accessible only within a tiny room called the Holy of Holies, but it's burst forth in a new way into the earth. No longer is the worship of the true God restricted to the Jewish temple or a certain people, but it's wherever God's people are, it's wherever God's spirit and truth are present. No longer does the torment and anguish of death condemn men to the grave forever. No longer can the spiritual and earthly powers avoid confrontation with the Lord. And Jesus, his anointed one. Brothers and sisters, Jesus isn't calling to mind, calling to our minds just his immediate context, his pittiest suffering. He's calling to our minds the end of all things. The escaton, his total victory achieved through that suffering. This is the joy that was set before him. This is the consummation of the covenant he inaugurated. It's the praise of God filling the mouths and the hearts of the faithful. It's the humble eating at his table and being satisfied. It's the hearts of those who seek the Lord living forever. It's the ends of the earth leaving their rebellion and turning to the Lord, the nations bowing before him, the generations being told about him, the declaration of his righteousness to a people not yet born. Jesus is calling the minds of those who heard him, including our minds this morning to these eschatological implications. Now, I had a whole application section prepared for this, but we are gonna skip over that today. As the band comes back up, I'm gonna ask the worship team to come up. I wanna spend some time praying for our nation in the light of yesterday's events. But first, brothers and sisters, the people of this nation, all the people of this nation need the gospel to transform them. Without that, what we saw yesterday will only spiral into ever-increasing madness and violence. I'm not calling for political involvement. I'm not calling for political disengagement. I'm calling for laboring in prayer, laboring in prayer for the souls and the state of our nation before laboring on social media or in the community. I'm calling for the church of Christ, those who have been transformed by the gospel to take up the burden of public, unashamed, loving proclamation that Christ calls all men everywhere to repentance and faith. I'm calling for the church to be in the embodiment of the kingdom that is ruled over by the true king in all that we think, in all that we say, in all that we do. I'm calling us to believe what Jesus said here on the cross and to throw your efforts into it in a way that demonstrates the transforming power of his work there. So let's pray together. [BLANK_AUDIO] Lord, how the nation's rage, how our nation is raging. [BLANK_AUDIO] It seems we have become a people bent on calling that which is evil good and that which is good evil. And the result has been violence and hatred. [BLANK_AUDIO] And you have made it plain in your word that you abhor acts of violence. [BLANK_AUDIO] That the one who lies in wait to shed another's blood is detestable to you. [BLANK_AUDIO] But you have also said that's a harbor of hatred in your heart towards those made in your image is the equivalent of murder. [BLANK_AUDIO] And we confess that we have often fallen into this evil. [BLANK_AUDIO] As individuals, as a nation, forgive us, we pray. [BLANK_AUDIO] God, we look around and see that many of our friends and acquaintances and loved ones are consumed by fear and have turned their cries of salvation to the idols of money or to policy or politicians or weapons. [BLANK_AUDIO] We confess that we too have been prone to putting our hopes and these things above you. [BLANK_AUDIO] Forgive us, we pray. [BLANK_AUDIO] We see in your word that inept and deceitful leaders are a judgment upon a nation. [BLANK_AUDIO] We see too that brutality and lawlessness is both a cause and a consequence of your judgment. [BLANK_AUDIO] We see that hatred of our parents and brutality towards our children, our evidence of your restraining hand of mercy being lifted from the people. [BLANK_AUDIO] We confess that we have lost our way and we cry out for mercy. [BLANK_AUDIO] Lord, you gave your only son to deliver us from sin. [BLANK_AUDIO] You promised him the nations as his inheritance and he is worthy to receive the reward of his suffering. We pray that in your grace and your mercy, you would send us conviction and revival confront us with your righteousness. That we may turn away from wickedness and evil. Lord, we pray that you would make true of our nation, of all nations. What you have revealed in your word, that we would love mercy. That we would act justly, that we would walk humbly with you. And God, we long for the day when violence is at an end. Long for the day when the sword and the spear have been beaten into plow, shares, and pruning hooks. These are the things for which Christ died. And he is worthy to see them accomplished in every age and in every land. We pray in your grace, make them a reality for us. Make them a reality for our land in this age. Through the transforming power of your gospel and your Holy Spirit. May every heart in our nation look upon Christ and wonder. Turn from their sin and find grace in your presence. We pray all this in your name. Amen. [MUSIC]