Psalms of the Summer: Do as I Say, And as I Do

One of the top 100 most-asked questions that were developed in response to feedback gathered from research about common questions readers have about the Bible is Why Does it Sometimes Seem Like God is Far Away? Here is the response a Bible devotion created for this question, “God promised his people, The Lord will deliver them to you and you must do to them all that I have commanded you. Yet sometimes God seems distant. During such times, the ever-present God hasn’t gone anywhere. Instead, specific obstacles we create or experience can make God seem far away. One obstacle is busyness. Our overloaded schedules can crowd out time with God and make it difficult to sense his presence in our lives. When Jesus arrived for dinner at the home of friends, Martha chose to busy herself with duties, while her sister sat at the feet of Jesus and was commended for doing what was better. Our crammed calendars can cause us to miss connecting with God daily. A second obstancle is “stuff” or possessions. Jesus urged a man to sell all he had and to follow him, but the man went away sad, because he had great wealth. Unfortunately, possessions and wealth can prevent people from pursuing Jesus. He warned, where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. So, if our hearts wander after more and more stuff, we will have little room for God. A third obstacle is sin. Christians can be secure in their relationship with God because their sins have been forgiven through Jesus’ death on the cross. But lingering sin in our lives can still stand in the way of present fellowship with God. Fortunately, when we confess our sin, repent, and obey God, we will feel the Father’s love and personal presence once again.

As we read in Psalm 22 earlier, had God forsaken David? No.... but it appeared that way to David. However, David still affirmed his conviction that God was in control (Psalm 22:3 “Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel.” ) and he soon regained his assurance that God would personally answer him (Psalm 22:24 “For he did not despise or abhor the affliction of the afflicted; he did not hide his face from me, but heard when I cried to him.” ) Psalms such as this one frequently alternate between the psalmist’s emotional despair and their faith in the truth about God.

Two weeks ago we looked at Psalm 106; a psalm of repentance. This psalm reminded us that when we forget God, we fall, but when we remember, repent, and return, we find mercy. God’s steadfast love is greater than our failure, and His faithfulness endures through every generation. It demonstrated God’s grace to the Israelites and to recognize God’s grace to us, by which we are redeemed into eternal life through Jesus Christ. Repentance leads to redemption and restoration. We have now reached Psalm 22; a psalm of redemption. There is a lot to this psalm and today we will only just touch the surface. It was through this psalm that I was reminded that the gospel writers couldn’t tell the story of Jesus’ suffering and death without using the Psalms, but also Jesus’ life and teaching link to the Psalms.

Psalm 22 follows of course Psalm 18 through to 21. Psalm 18 is a song David sung to the Lord on the day he rescued him from his enemies. Psalm 19 declares the glory of the Lord, Psalm 20 and 21 contain prayers and triumph, we then come to Psalm 22 which speaks of the depths of suffering. Why? As one commentary states, “Perhaps the answer is that we need to grasp that the victory of God’s King comes at a cost we can never overestimate and must never forget.” Let me say that again, “the victory of God’s King comes at a cost we can never overestimate and must never forget.”

I’ve sure we’ve all heard the saying, Do as I say, not as I do. This phrase is a classic example of hypocrisy—where someone promotes a behavior or principle but fails to follow it themselves. While it can be used by authority figures (like parents or leaders) to justify inconsistent behavior, research shows that this approach is largely ineffective and even harmful. Having children I have seen first hand how this doesn’t work. Not that we’ve said this phrase to our children, but that despite what we might say, they follow more the examples we do, over what we might say and I’m sure many of you have been in the exact same positions before, especially as parents. In 1977 Albert Bandura’s Social Learning Theory demonstrated that individuals learn more through observation and imitation, than instruction alone; in that we tend to copy more of what we see rather than what we are told. Neuroscientists found that we have mirror neurons in our brains, and these fire not only when we act but also when we observe others acting. This reinforces the idea that we’re wired to learn from behavior more than verbal instructions. And a study done out of Harvard in 2010 found that children’s values and behaviors are more influenced by what their parents model than what they say. All this to say, people model what they observe - Actions speak louder than just words.

God, Yahweh, greater than other other god perceived in this world and beyond, is a personal God. God sent his son Jesus to earth to save us. He could have done that in many ways. On a large horse with an army behind him, or with all the weapons in the world, but as we all know, that’s not what happened. He sent his son,Jesus, to earth as a baby, swaddled in a manger because there was no room at the inn. Think of that, no room for the savior of the world. And people watched him grow up, and because of many faithful writers, we have it all written down to “see” for ourselves. Through reading scripture we can walk with Jesus as if we were there during that time. We see how his actions matched his words. We can “see” how God wanted us to live. Jesus, a man who knew no sin, is our example for how to live. Science discovered the scientific explanation behind things of which God, of course, had known all along. When you think of the research behind the saying, “Do as I say, not as I do.” Fairly recent when you consider all of history, and yet, God, our creator, knew of this long before we ever did. He created us, how course he knew. He knew that, we follow better by examples than just words. God didn’t say, do as I say, not as I do, but do as I say and as I do. God doesn’t just give us rules from a distance. Throughout the Old Testament, His commands reveal His holiness — but humans consistently fail to live up to them. Instead of saying “figure it out,” God steps into our world in the person of Jesus. As a baby, born into a working-class family, in a small town, he understood the ordinary. He was known as a carpenter, he knew the grind of daily life. He felt grief, anger and joy, demonstrating that having emotions doesn’t make us weak but makes us real. He had close friends and was let down by them, demonstrating that he understands friendship and heartbreak. He faced real temptation, he got tired and needed rest. He knew what it was like to be drained, and shows us how to recharge through prayer and quiet. He walked the road of humility so He could relate to the poor, the outcast, and the overlooked. And he suffered unfairly. He knew what it was like to be wronged, misunderstood, and mistreated. Jesus is not just God above us — He is God with us. He entered our world, our struggles, our joys, and our pain.

As it says in John 1:14 “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” God doesn’t just say how to live, he lives it in Jesus, full of grace and truth. Jesus said, “Follow me,” not “Do as I say.” He lived with integrity, humility, and compassion — loving enemies, forgiving sinners, and praying for those who persecuted Him. As he said in John 13:15 “For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.” The gospel invites us into grace, relationship, and transformation. Jesus is what God says and what God does — fully aligned, perfectly consistent, lovingly personal. Human leaders often fail to live up to their own standards. That’s why the saying “Do as I say, not as I do” exists — to excuse hypocrisy. But God is different. He never commands what He isn’t willing to live. He models what He calls us to. And the clearest example is Jesus.

So, how does this relate to Psalm 22? The first verse of Psalm 22:1 “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?” Have you ever cried those words? Well, maybe not those exact words, but something with the same meaning behind them. I have. But I’ve also had the feelings that if I trust God how can I feel like he has forsaken me? Well, these words are not only found in Psalm 22, but are also very famous words, spoken by Jesus on the cross (found in Matthew 27:46 “And about three o’clock Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”” ). Jesus knows the prophecy of Psalm 22 and speaks it as it comes to pass. Why would Jesus cry these words on the cross? Did he really believe God had forsaken him? While some have believed Jesus crying these words from the cross meant that Jesus believed the Father had abandoned him to die for the sins of the world. That didn’t make sense to me. Jesus, God’s son, knew what he came to earth to do. For others, Jesus’ declaration is not a sign of doubting the Father when he says, “Why have you forsaken me?” But instead to those nearby who heard him they would’ve immediately recognized that Jesus was quoting a familiar psalm, the psalm we read today. He was uttering words the Jews in the crowd would have known by heart. During Jesus’ time, scripture, including the psalms, were not referenced by their chapter or verse but were titled by their first line, not the numbers we use today. His cry on the cross could have been him drawing the crowd’s attention to the entire psalm as it is to do for us today - not just the message of the first line. When reading Psalm 22 all the way through you see the promise it holds. The Gospels may be indicating that Jesus recited the entire psalm, which ends on a note of victory.

Yet when David wrote this Psalm Jesus hadn’t walked the earth yet. Although there were times when David’s plight was desperate (e.g., 1 Sam. 23:24–28), he was never executed, as Psalm 22 describes. Perhaps David wrote this as a kind of summing up of all his sufferings. The words of this psalm were written over a thousand years before the crucifixion. Yet, they are prophetic of the prayer of Jesus from the cross. Jesus was thirsty, his hands and feet were pierced, his bones were not broken, and the soldiers gambled for his clothing. The prophetic description of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross is obvious in this psalm. David wrote, My God, My God, expressing the personal relationship he had with God, and Jesus spoke these same words on the cross, My God, My God. Jesus, the son of God, no one closer, reminding us of our personal relationship we can have. Connecting My God with Why Have You Forsaken Me? expresses both very deep feelings and a great faith. To address God as My God claims the intimacy of a convenant relationship yet forsaken is also a convenant word, as it means to break covenant. God has placed under the covenant curse, one who is faithful to the covenant. How can this be? Not until the New Testament is this comprehensible. As it says in Galatians 3:13 “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”—” This cry of anguish of Jesus from the cross wasn’t a cry of doubt but an urgent appeal to God. He was expressing the depth of His pain, but also anchoring Himself in Scripture, what we now know as Psalm 22 — a psalm that begins in anguish and ends in hope and redemption. Jesus’ cry gives us permission to cry out, too. God is always present in the midst of suffering (Psalm 22:21 “Save me from the mouth of the lion! From the horns of the wild oxen you have rescued me.” ). This psalm teaches us that when we feel the sting of rejection, we must keep in mind the hope and victory that God promises us. When we look at this psalm overall, in the first 21 verses there are three lament sections each followed by words that express faith. As David Dickson calls these three assaults of “sense” or experience are each followed by evidence of “Faith wrestling against it.” Then verses 22-31 are divided into praise for deliverance and culminating in a vision of worldwide blessings. This Psalms demonstrates that suffering hasn’t separated us from God, but instead God shares in our suffering (Psalm 22:24 “For he did not despise or abhor the affliction of the afflicted; he did not hide his face from me, but heard when I cried to him.” ). So, as Jesus can cry out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me” so we too can, not out of doubt but as an appeal. Because no matter your past mistakes, no matter your history, no matter whatever, God redeems.

As the psalm ends Psalm 22:27–31 “All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord; and all the families of the nations shall worship before him. For dominion belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nations. To him, indeed, shall all who sleep in the earth bow down; before him shall bow all who go down to the dust, and I shall live for him. Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord, and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, saying that he has done it.” Similar to what Jesus declares on the cross in John 19:30 “It is finished.” God paid the price, so you didn’t have to.

As Christopher Ash writes, “If we today, like David a millennium before Christ, experience the felt distance of God, it can never be for us in Christ (or for David) a real and objective wrath or curse. For Christ has borne our curse for us. Nevertheless, we may in some measure experience this distress, and when we do, this psalm becomes ours in Christ.”

God doesn’t say, “Do as I say, not as I do.” God says, “Do as I say — and as I have shown you through Jesus.”

In Jesus, we see not only God's commands but God's character. He walked the path He calls us to follow — with humility, love, and obedience. He didn’t just preach the way; He lived it.

And when we fall short — as David did, and as we all will — the good news is that Jesus didn’t just show the way; He became the Way. Through His death and resurrection, He made redemption possible for all. (John 14:6)