Psalm 22

Introduction

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. Welcome back to our series through the Psalms, where we step into the story of Israel and live the same ancient truths in our lives today. Let’s begin by giving this time to the Lord.

Lord, you are God and you are King. Your presence fills the cosmos and there is nowhere that your light does not shine and cast out darkness. And you have made your dwelling in us by your Holy Spirit, who testifies that we are your children, adopted and redeemed from the world.

And yet, Lord, we confess that we have moments when we do not feel your presence. We confess that we doubt your nearness and your goodness towards us. We confess that the troubles of this world often overtake us and we lose sight of the hope that is set before us.

Lord, open your living word to us so that we may draw close to you. For your word is not just cold text on paper, but it is living and powerful and in these pages, you are here. Show us your glory, show us your love, and show us how we might pray these words as an offering to you. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

Today we’re looking at a Psalm that has a couple of passages that may be familiar to you: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (v.1) or “They divine my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots” (v. 18). If those words sounds familiar to you, that’s probably because Matthew quotes them in his gospel account, specifically in 27:46 and 27:35. Matthew is famous among the gospel writers for quoting a lot of the Old Testament. The idea is that Matthew wants to show how the story of Jesus is continuous, not different from the Old Testament. Still, it is quite significant that Matthew quote not once but several times from one Psalm in the most important part of the gospel.

And it’s not just Matthew. In the book of Hebrews, the author describes what Jesus accomplished in his death and how he is raised to glory. And in that description of glory, the author of Hebrews quotes Psalm 22:22: “I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will praise you.”

Jesus

So it is quite clear that Psalm 22 was very important for the early Christians to process and to understand what Jesus was experiencing in his life, death, and resurrection.

David

This raises an issue that we have come up against several times in this series: the header of Psalm 22 says that it was written by king David. So is this Psalm David’s reflection about his own life, or is it a prophecy about Jesus Christ a thousand years in the future?

The answer is...complicated. Scholars have not found any events in David’s life that would correspond to what David is talking about. This Psalm is not just talking about hardship or trial in general, but specifically about execution when one has been sentenced to death. We don’t see anything in David’s life that resembles this. How he could write something like this is a bit unclear since he doesn’t actually have these experiences. One possibility is that David is not just thinking about his own life, but he is reflecting on the grand story of all of Israel, which has literally come to the point of total destruction. Perhaps the best way to think about Psalm 22 is that David is truly functioning as a prophet who foresees the future suffering Messiah who would be sentenced to death.

Psalm 22, 2 questions

So for our purposes today, we will be looking at Psalm 22 from two angles. First, what does it mean for a human being to pray this? After all, it started out as the prayer of a human being and later as the prayer of a nation of humans. And of course, this prayer is meant to inspire us towards prayer in our lives today.

Second, what does it mean for Jesus Christ, the Son of God, to pray this Psalm? If Jesus is fully God just as he is fully man, and if he is perfect and sinless and rightfully the king of the universe, what does it mean to pray this prayer?

Ropes

One way we can think of this Psalm is that it’s like an emotional tug-of-war between darkness and light. There are points when life feels dark and hopeless. It feels like God is far away and that God has abandoned us. And then there are points when life is full of light and full of hope. The structure of the Psalm is that the tone shifts quite equally between darkness and light before moving quite definitively to the light side towards the later verses. So spoiler alert: there is a happy ending. The speaker of the Psalm is able to celebrate and praise God by the end of the Psalm.

Emphasis

I want to stress here that this darkness is not the same as evil. It is completely human to feel sad, frustrated, to even cry out that we feel God is far away. That is not wrong! I think that it would be a great tragedy when Christians say that it is wrong to doubt, when it is wrong to even feel abandoned and crushed by all the hardships of the world, as though those feelings are blasphemy. I also think it would be wrong to take a line like “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me” and try to explain how the one speaking does not actually think God has forsaken them.

Quote

The great gift of Psalms like Psalm 22 is that they give us a language to faithfully express doubt and even despair so that we can deal with our hurt and thereafter return to the light.

Why Have You Forsaken Me? (1-2)

Of course, this verse was famously used by Jesus when he died on the cross.

Did God abandon Jesus

And many Christians interpret this as evidence that God the Father, who is holy and cannot look upon sin, has abandoned God the Son, because he now bears the sin of the world on the cross. So that Father turns his face away, and in this moment, Jesus experiences total abandonment. He’s rejected by the crowds, he’s rejected by his own disciples, and now he is rejected even by his Father.

To say the least, there are problems with this way of looking at it. This topic is the subject of PhD dissertations and decades of debate, and I have a few minutes!

Jesus is one with the Father

The main counter is that Jesus repeatedly affirms that he is one with the Father. Jesus is God, and so Jesus cannot be separated from God by definition. When Jesus takes on the sin of the world, he does not stop being God. So when Jesus cries out “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” this is not a theological statement that God the Father has abandoned God the Son in reality.

Jesus is not faking it

At the same time though, Jesus is not doing this for show. This is not a case of “Oh I don’t actually feel alone, I know that my Father is actually still very near me, so I’ll just say this to fulfill the Scriptures.” Jesus really did feel alone, abandoned, rejected, and I admit that I don’t have enough knowledge to explain how that all works. But if we think that Jesus was just faking his abandonment and rejection, then he has not become fully human, which is the whole point of the Gospel!

Tensions

Somehow we must hold these truths together in tension because both are true: that Jesus as God was never abandoned by the Father, and that Jesus as Man truly experienced total abandonment. I’ll leave you with one scholar’s comment and we’ll move on from here:

Psalms 1–72: An Introduction and Commentary The Power of Darkness (22:1–21)

It is not a lapse of faith, nor a broken relationship, but a cry of disorientation as God’s familiar, protective presence is withdrawn (as it was from, e.g., the blameless Job) and the enemy closes in.

Alone

If you are watching this and you are in a place in life where you feel alone and abandoned and forsaken, you have been praying over and over and there seems to be no answer, I hope that these opening verses can offer some comfort. God does not hate you because you doubt his love for you; he loves you because you are praying and fighting in spite of that doubt. Even the greatest men in the story of Scripture also had moments of severe doubt and distress, and they knew that it was okay to tell God about their struggles.

Yet You Are Holy (3-5)

This is the first of the series of counter narratives. The first point of tension where the light is pulling back against the darkness.

History of Israel

The Psalmist remembers that in the history of Israel, time and time again God has proven himself faithful. Every time Israel was in danger of being destroyed, God rescued them at just the right time, whether it was at the Red Sea, or during the time of the Judges, or even during David’s own battles. We know that out of these moments of God’s divine rescue, people wrote songs and set up memorials so that they could tell future generations about God’s faithfulness. After the Red Sea crossing, Moses and Miriam led Israel in song. In the book of Judges, when Barak defeat the Canaanite army, the judge Deborah writes a song about God’s salvation. And they pass down these songs through the generations so that future generations can take heart that whatever comes their way, God will prove faithful. And that is the promise that David is clinging to now. He is at his Red Sea moment; like Barak, he is facing some dangerous enemy. And just like them, God will also help him.

Holy

It is interesting that here, the Psalmist does not first acknowledge God as loving or compassionate or gracious, but holy.

Definition

One definition of “holy” is “set apart” - something unique, something that doesn’t belong with others. We Christians often say that because God is holy, he cannot dwell with sinful mankind. Isn’t that precisely the problem here? The Psalmist is in grief because God feels far away and distant and is not answering. Wouldn’t he want to focus on God’s nearness and love and compassion? Why focus on a trait that makes God seem even further away?

God rescues because he is holy

What if God’s awesome holiness is not what keeps him away from his imperfect children, but it is precisely because God is holy that he is the only one able to rescue us? Because he is holy and and righteous and cannot stand to look upon evil and injustice, he is the only one who can intervene and put an end to evil when it happens.

Remember the stories

There’s something practical we can take away from this. When we run into trials, when we feel abandoned, what if we were to pause and recall the stories of Scripture, or maybe stories in our own lives about how God has been faithful? What if we were to acknowledge that God is holy, and that makes him supremely able to respond to whatever we are facing?

Scorned By Mankind (6-8)

Now we swing back to the darkness and the struggle. Okay, so Israel’s history shows that God has been faithful. But I’m struggling and hurting right now! If God really is as faithful as he says he is, why is he letting me go through so much suffering? This is not just a logical problem, but a personal one. Because if God really is loving and caring, then maybe the reason I am suffering is because I am so bad that I am not worthy of his love and care. Sure, God can love sinners, but maybe I am such a terrible sinner that he can’t love me. I am such a terrible sinner that other people, other sinners, can look at me and mock me.

Well, if you feel that way, you are in good company. Consider Matthew’s account of the crucifixion:

Matthew 27:41–44 ESV

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 now from the cross, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him. For he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’ ” And the robbers who were crucified with him also reviled him in the same way.

Jesus

Jesus himself knows what it feels like to be, if you will pardon the language, the scum of the earth. He knows what it feels like to be a worm, mocked and reviled by literally everyone around him - even the robbers next to him who had actually committed some serious crime!

I think we can take comfort from this. When I am struggling with feeling alone and hated by everyone around me, the Son of God himself knows exactly how I feel. And unlike Jesus’ experience, I am never fully alone even in those moments because of the Spirit that dwells with me. When people mock me because of my faith, I am sharing in the suffering of Christ, and that is something that Paul says we can boast about. Because, isn’t our whole purpose as Christians to become like Christ? We don’t go around looking for suffering and rejection, but when we do encounter it, in a way, that is when we are most like Christ.

Be Not Far From Me (9-11)

Another swing back to the realm of light and hope. In the face of total abandonment and rejection, the Psalmist uses parental imagery to describe God’s love and care. Barring some exceptional cases, parents love their children, they protect them, they shelter and clothe them, they do everything they can so that the child can live a good life. I myself am the child of parents whom I know would do just about anything to ensure my well-being because I know they love me. And here, God is still one level higher than the love of a father and a mother.

Isaiah puts this same idea quite dramatically:

Isaiah 49:15 ESV

“Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.

I cannot imagine how hard it is to make my parents stop loving me. I mean, it would have to be earth-shattering level of bad. And even if I did that, even if I exhausted their love for me, God’s love goes deeper still. And that is how the Psalmist trusts in God to call on him even when he feels totally abandoned, knowing that it is impossible for God to stop loving him.

In the Dust of Death (12-18)

Now we swing back to the realm of darkness and death, and this is where things truly hit rock bottom, and it’s actually quite gruesome. If Psalm 22 was describing an actual execution, everything up to this point was just the build up - the sentencing by the judge, the walk of shame to the place of execution, the jeering by the crowds. And now we’re in the killing zone itself. We are literally looking at the animals that are about to eat us alive. We’re strapped into the torture machine. We’re not dead yet, but we can feel all the pain as our life is slowly ebbing away.

The parallels here with the crucifixion of Jesus are just everywhere. The pain that he feels, how he is surrounded by enemies, when it says in verse 14 that he is poured out like water, I can’t help but wonder if it’s referring to when Jesus’ side is pierced and blood and water flow out.

But the most explicit reference is verse 18 which appears in Matthew 27:35:

Psalm 22:18 ESV

they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.

Matthew 27:35 ESV

And when they had crucified him, they divided his garments among them by casting lots.

If this image doesn’t offend you, it should. There is literally a man dying in agony for a crime he did not commit, and the people who wrongfully put him to death are making a game out of it! This goes beyond just “wrong” - it is pure evil! This is the worst of the worst of humanity's brokenness that the Psalmist is experiencing - but this is not the end of the story. There is one more “but,” one more turning point, and from there everything gets better.

Deliver My Soul (19-21)

Rescue

When sin and evil have done their worst, God comes through. At just the right time, God dramatically saves the Psalmist from the mouth of the lion and from the horns of the wild oxen. This is the general trajectory of the biblical story: God intervenes at the very last moment to rescue his children.

Abraham

If you recall the story of Abraham when he was told to sacrifice Isaac, it was only when Isaac was tied to the altar and Abraham stood over him with the knife, and the knife was on its way down - only then did the angel of the Lord intervene and stop Abraham’s hand.

Exodus

In the story of the Exodus, God waited until Israel was caught between the Red Sea and Pharaoh’s army, when they were all panicking and desperate to part the Red Sea.

Lazarus

In the New Testament, when Jesus hears about Lazarus dying, he waits until he is dead before he goes over to raise him from the dead.

Why?

Why does God do this? Why does God wait for his people to suffer so much, to struggle so much, and to almost give up their faith before he does anything about it? If he really is loving and all-powerful, couldn’t he have stopped the suffering before it even began? Does he really let people die just to prove that he can raise them again? It might even seem a bit cruel of God to let so much suffering happen just so he can show off how powerful he is.

Again, this is one of those questions that we all need to wrestle with, because there isn’t a neat, simple answer. From personal experience, I can say that some of the most difficult moments in my life are responsible for refining my character and making me a better person. Would I prefer to have an easier life with fewer struggles and end up as a more arrogant, spoiled, lazy human being? Something tells me that I would rather have gone through those hard times instead, even if I didn’t understand back then how they would change me.

I Will Tell of Your Name (22-26)

Now, having experienced God’s salvation, what do we do? The Psalmist doesn’t hesitate - his immediate response is to praise God in front of everyone else, and to invite others to praise him as well.

Praise

How often do we publicly praise God for his faithfulness and salvation in our lives? When God has done a marvelous thing, whatever that may be in your life, what do we do in response? We do some of that on Sunday, when we go to church and worship with the community of God. But I believe we can expand our definition of publicly praising God. What talents or gifts do we have that we can share with others?

Writing

I believe that I have the gift of language, so the way I praise God is by speaking, writing on my blog, giving devotionals.

Talking

I believe I also have the gift of connecting with people, so when I spend time with people I want to bring up God in our conversations.

Running

Now, I also like to run - how could that be a way to praise God? Running doesn’t usually fall under the Five Acts of Worship. But what if when I run, when I am engaging my whole body in motion, when I feel so alive because blood is rushing through me, what if that reminds me about the blood of Christ flowing through my veins, or the breath of the Spirit of life that I am breathing in and out every second?

Waking

Another example that I think is relevant to all of us. Do we give thanks each morning for the fact that we are alive and that we are spiritually alive? I learned this year that modern day Jews and Muslims, at least the devout ones, offer a prayer to God as soon as they wake up, perhaps even before they open their eyes. And it is something to the effect of “Thank you, God, for giving me back my life.” Because the understanding is that when we sleep, we have no control over whether we wake up again. The fact that we can wake up is a gift of God’s grace. And as followers of Jesus, the fact that he lives in me and gives me abundant life for today is a gift of divine grace!

And yet, and I am certainly guilty of this, we wake up and the first thing on our minds is to check our phones, read the news, see who tagged us on Facebook or Instagram or sent us a message from the night before.

How might we redeem these little parts of our lives as ways to praise God for his faithfulness?

The Lord Reigns (27-31)

And finally, the psalm concludes in exuberant praise. And clearly, this praise goes far beyond the natural world because the Lord is not just an earthly king but the eternal King of Kings. And his reign extends throughout space, to all the ends of the earth, and even throughout time, to a people yet unborn.

Now that we have come to the end of this Psalm, I think it is helpful to read through the gospel accounts of the crucifixion and compare them back to Psalm 22. And we might better appreciate what Christ was experiencing as he was on the cross. Let us not think that when Christ was on the cross, he was somehow detached from the pain because he was God. No, he felt every ounce of pain in every cell of his body. And that is why we can be assured that when we experience pain and suffering, he knows exactly how we feel and he joins us in our suffering. And so Psalm 22 gives us the language to express our very real frustration and our cries to God when he feels far away.

But even more so, we read Psalm 22 because we know how the story ends. Although Psalm 22 is full of pain and hurt and death, the story always ends in salvation and celebration. Psalm 22 gives us the confidence to celebrate God’s faithfulness even in the middle of our darkest moments.

I pray that this Psalm inspires you to a life of deeper relationship to Christ. Grace and Peace.