Psalm 22:1-2, 24
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…
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."
Comments:
The psalmist knew
lament...and to some extent, we all do and verse one becomes the
universal cry of humanity. Long before David wrote this psalm, the righteous
man, Job, longed for an answer from the God he had only heard about. “I cry to you for
help and you do not answer me; I stand, and you only look at me. (Job 30:20) Little
did Job know how firmly God believed in him and was in his camp…until the end
of the book when, though humbled in God’s presence, he heard the Lord vindicate him before his “comforters”
and put their health and future in his hands (Job 42:7-10). The late Peter Craigie pointed out that this "psalm differs from the record of Job and Jeremiah by virtue of its liturgical character; the liturgy immediately sets the loneliness of dying into the context of a caring community." (Psalms 1-50, WBC [Word, 1983], 202) We are meant to face life together not as individuals.
There are times when God seems far from us, but
because Jesus once had to live out (or more accurately “die-out”) this verse in
a complete and total way (Jesus even quoted this verse in agony on the cross [Matthew 27:46 and Mark
15:34]) we no longer have to. He will not forsake us even when we feel like He has (Hebrews 13:5).
Have you ever
been in the same frame of mind as the psalmist? I am encouraged to remember
that Jesus knows what this feels like too...at a level I will never know...as he quoted this verse while hanging on the cross for my sin. As you read the
rest of the psalm note the tone towards the end! In v. 24 we see that God
himself, in Christ, answered David’s cry, and the cry of all the afflicted
throughout history. It is no wonder that the psalm ends in praise.
Sadly, though so many around the world have cried out like David in Psalm 22:1-2, too many people bail, quit, and walk away from God and his people before they get to the collective experience of v. 24, often because of undiplomatic and aloof believers. Heaven forbid that we should cause any to stumble. Christ did everything to enter into their suffering. Here is another
quote from Craigie,
"The sufferer in Ps 22 is a human being, experiencing the terror of
mortality in the absence of God and the presence of enemies. In the suffering
of Jesus, we perceive God, in Jesus, entering into and participating in the
terror of mortality; he identifies with the suffering and the dying. Because
God, in Jesus, has engaged in that desolation, he can offer comfort to those of
us who now walk where the psalmist walked." (Psalms 1-50, 203)
Allow me to share a couple more verses from Psalm 22
that I started thinking about yesterday. Verses 4-5 might be your
testimony as it was David’s…
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.
However, even if your physical parents and grandparents did not trust
in the Lord, your spiritual parents—those who shared the gospel message with
you and those who made sure you had the Bible to read of God's love for you [myself included]—all experienced the Lord’s deliverance in many different ways. I hope it
gives you the confidence to be able to pray like David did in v. 19-21 for
yourself and others.
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!
While we may not be spared from all hardship and danger, we
will never be alone in the midst of it. Nothing will be able to separate us
from the love of God (Romans 8:38-39) and when we cry out to the Lord for salvation
he will not cast us out (Acts 2:21 and Romans 10:13, cited from Joel 2:32).
Christ endured the separation for us so that God might now dwell in our midst by the Holy Spirit. Let us abide in him (John 15)!
One last thing, this deliverance that David sought from death, centuries later became the deliverance that Jesus experienced through his own death and resurrection and now makes available to all nations and all peoples. He is a Father to the fatherless and a brother to the forsaken. Let us come to him in faith, together, as the great collected people of God! That "unanswered call" of our soul's desperation has been abundantly and lovingly answered!
