Spread the Message

Have you ever had something awesome happen to you and couldn’t wait to spread the news?

Or somebody did something for you, that made you extremely grateful? And you vowed to let everyone know how thoughtful and helpful they were?

That’s where we find King David in our text this morning. He vows to praise the Lord because of the deliverance he received when he needed it most. It’s in Psalm 22:22-31.

But it’s not any ordinary Psalm. It’s ultimately about the suffering, praise and victory of the Messiah.

While David was primarily writing about his current situation, this Psalm is considered to have a dual fulfillment as verse 22 is quoted almost verbatim in Hebrews 2:12 as Jesus’ praise for deliverance.

And just as David’s vow to praise the Lord begins with the assembly, goes out to the world, and then future generations, the onus is upon us to spread the word of the Messiah’s victory over death.

As Jesus was hanging on the cross, he was anticipating his resurrection on that first Easter Sunday morning.

Let’s read Psalm 22:22-31

Psalm 22:22–31 NKJV

22 I will declare Your name to My brethren; In the midst of the assembly I will praise You. 23 You who fear the Lord, praise Him! All you descendants of Jacob, glorify Him, And fear Him, all you offspring of Israel! 24 For He has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; Nor has He hidden His face from Him; But when He cried to Him, He heard. 25 My praise shall be of You in the great assembly; I will pay My vows before those who fear Him. 26 The poor shall eat and be satisfied; Those who seek Him will praise the Lord. Let your heart live forever! 27 All the ends of the world Shall remember and turn to the Lord, And all the families of the nations Shall worship before You. 28 For the kingdom is the Lord’s, And He rules over the nations. 29 All the prosperous of the earth Shall eat and worship; All those who go down to the dust Shall bow before Him, Even he who cannot keep himself alive. 30 A posterity shall serve Him. It will be recounted of the Lord to the next generation, 31 They will come and declare His righteousness to a people who will be born, That He has done this.

Psalm 22:22-31 expresses praise to God for the expanding proclamation of the good news of victory over death.

I. First, the good news of victory over death is proclaimed to the congregation.

Verse 22 says,

Psalm 22:22 NKJV

22 I will declare Your name to My brethren; In the midst of the assembly I will praise You.

Hebrews 2:12 quotes this verse. “The quotation tells us how to interpret the psalm. It tells us that Jesus is the speaker, not just in this verse but throughout. And it tells us that the ‘brothers’ (and sisters) of the psalm’s second half are those for whom he died and rose again.”

On that first Easter Sunday, or Resurrection Sunday as it’s more accurately called. Jesus did indeed show himself to his “brothers.” I think especially of the disciples on the road to Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem.

While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them. But their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them, “What is this conversation that you are holding with each other as you walk?” And they stood still, looking sad.

Then one of them, named Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?” And he said to them, “What things?” And they said to him, “Concerning Jesus of Nazareth” (Luke 24:15–19a), and went on to say that Jesus had been crucified, and how they had hoped that Jesus would be the one to redeem Israel.

The wonderful irony is that Jesus was actually the only one in Jerusalem who really did know what had happened!

He was alive! He had been raised from death back to life again! Jesus told them how all the Scriptures pointed to him. When they drew near to Emmaus, they persuaded Jesus to stay and have dinner with them. He went in and took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it them. “And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And he vanished from their sight” (Luke 24:31). They now understood—Jesus was alive!

They rushed back to Jerusalem that same day and found the eleven disciples and told them that they had seen Jesus. As they were talking about these things, Jesus himself stood among them, and said to them, “Peace to you!” (Luke 24:36).

Over the next forty days Jesus showed himself alive to his disciples on various occasions, as well as to other believers. He praised the Father to his brothers and in the midst of the congregation for his victory over death and sin.

Because of the incredible comebacks in the 2001 World Series between the Arizona Diamondbacks and the New York Yankees, Sports Illustrated ran an interesting article on comebacks. That series had three huge comebacks—the Yankees with two in New York and the Diamondbacks with their big one in game seven. The piece in Sports Illustrated was of a different nature though. Of the ten greatest comebacks, according to Sports Illustrated, only two had anything to do with sports. Number seven on the list was Harry Truman’s defeat of John Dewey in 1948. The sixth greatest comeback was humanity in the 14th century after 25 million people died from the Black Death. Third place went to Michael Jordan for his comeback to basketball after a two-year hiatus in baseball.

Then right there on the pages of Sports Illustrated is their opinion that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the number one comeback of all time. It simply reads, “1. Jesus Christ, 33 A.D. Defies critics and stuns the Romans with his resurrection.”

The other nine spots on their list of greatest comebacks in world history are certainly debatable, but they were right on target with their assessment of Jesus’ resurrection.

Jesus’ resurrection turned his brothers from fear to joy, from despondency to delight, from cowardice to boldness. They proclaimed the good news of Jesus’ victory over death.

II. Second, the good news of victory over death is proclaimed to the ends of the earth.

As Jesus was hanging on the cross, he was not only thinking of his disciples. He was also praising his Father that the news of his victory over death would go to the ends of the earth. The promise given to Abraham millennia before that all the families of the nations would be blessed would come to fulfillment. And so Jesus prayed to the Father on the cross,

Psalm 22:27–29 NKJV

27 All the ends of the world Shall remember and turn to the Lord, And all the families of the nations Shall worship before You. 28 For the kingdom is the Lord’s, And He rules over the nations. 29 All the prosperous of the earth Shall eat and worship; All those who go down to the dust Shall bow before Him, Even he who cannot keep himself alive.

In fact, during the forty days after Jesus’ resurrection and before his ascension into heaven where he is presently seated at the Father’s right hand, Jesus explicitly told his disciples to take the good news of his resurrection to the ends of the earth.

Just before his ascension, Jesus told his disciples to stay in Jerusalem to wait for the baptism of the Holy Spirit. The disciples asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?”

After these wonderful forty days with Jesus, they still thought that somehow Jesus was going to physically establish his kingdom on earth. But Jesus said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority.”

In other words, Jesus told his disciples that the timing of the establishment of his kingdom on earth was not for them to know.

Until that happened, they were to spread the good news of his resurrection, as he went on to say,

Acts 1:6–8 NKJV

6 Therefore, when they had come together, they asked Him, saying, “Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” 7 And He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in His own authority. 8 But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

For two thousand years, Jesus’ disciples have been proclaiming the good news of his victory over death.

There are believers now in every country of the world. But not every language group has God’s word so that they can read it for themselves in their own language. There are still some language groups that need to hear about Jesus’ victory over death. So, we still have work to do to complete the Great Commission.

While attending Harvard in 2004, Mark Zuckerberg hunkered down in his dorm room for a week and created the forerunner of Facebook. In 2010, a movie, The Social Network, gave an unauthorized version of Zuckerberg and further broadened the spotlight he is in. In 2010, there were 700 billion users of Facebook, which represented roughly one-tenth of the world’s population. Today, there are 1.69 billion users of Facebook, and there’s no downturn in sight. Some contend that it’s just a craze for the young, but David Kirkpatrick, author of The Facebook Effect, has noted that virtually every educated person in Italy and Turkey uses the social network. Kirkpatrick knows the young billionaire well and has said Zuckerberg “wants everyone on the planet to use it.” A lot goes into a phenomenal success story like this, but it sure helps that Facebook’s founder has a vision for 100% global participation.

Listen again to Jesus’ prayer on the cross,

Psalm 22:27 NKJV

27 All the ends of the world Shall remember and turn to the Lord, And all the families of the nations Shall worship before You.

It is our job to take the good news of Jesus’ victory over death and proclaim it to the very ends of the earth. And the interesting thing is that we are now able to use tools like Facebook to take the gospel to all the ends of the earth so that all the families of the nations shall worship the Lord.

III. And third, the good news of victory over death is proclaimed to the coming generation. (22:30-31)

Psalm 22:30–31 NKJV

30 A posterity shall serve Him. It will be recounted of the Lord to the next generation, 31 They will come and declare His righteousness to a people who will be born, That He has done this.

While hanging on the cross, Jesus was thinking about those for whom He was dying.

Jesus was thinking of people throughout all generations who would hear the good news of his victory over death. Untold numbers of people not yet born will come to a saving knowledge of the Lord.

The last phrase of the psalm is “he has done this.”

As Jesus finished his meditation on Psalm 22 on the cross, he took that last phrase and spoke it in his mother-tongue of Aramaic, and said, “It is finished” (John 19:30), which is what “he has done it” means.

One commentator writes, “Therefore, what was finished was the atonement by which the righteous demands of God for sin’s punishment had been fully satisfied and the righteousness of God was now able to be freely offered to all who would believe on Jesus.”

A young man approached his pastor after a worship service and asked, “What can I do to find peace in my life?”

The minister replied, “I’m sorry, but you’re too late.”

The distraught man was perplexed. He said, “You mean I’m too late to find peace? You mean I’m too late to be saved?”

The pastor answered, “No, you’re just too late to do anything about it. Jesus did everything that needed to be done 2,000 years ago.”

That is what “he has done it” means. It means that Jesus did everything necessary to accomplish our salvation. There is nothing we can do to earn or merit salvation. We simply receive it as a free gift of God’s amazing grace.

As I’m thinking back, last year was the first year we didn’t meet together to celebrate the resurrection of our Savior. It was an unusual year in so many ways. To date, millions of people around the world are confirmed to have the coronavirus. That is terrible, and we pray for their speedy recovery.

But I want to tell you about a pandemic that is even worse than coronavirus.

It is a pandemic that every person in the entire world is confirmed to have. And it is sin.

The coronavirus pandemic is terrible. But the sin pandemic is far worse. People are still working on a cure for coronavirus. But, Jesus provided the only cure for sin. He died on the cross and paid the full penalty for sin. “He has done it.” All you have to do to receive the cure for your sin is to believe it for yourself.

Based on what we know about Jesus, let us believe that Jesus died and rose again for sinners like us, and tell it to others.

Dr. Francis Collins is a medical doctor and geneticist who was appointed by President Clinton to head the Human Genome Project. His team successfully decoded the three billion genes of human DNA. Collins spent much of his early life looking at Jesus as a fairy tale suitable only for bedtime stories. But as his career evolved, he was deeply impacted by the faith he saw in some of his desperately ill patients. He researched history and was amazed at the evidence concerning Christ. Collins wondered how a rational scientist could believe in such “difficult stuff” like the resurrection. He concluded. “If Christ really was the Son of God, as he explicitly claimed, then surely of all those who had ever walked the earth, he could suspend the laws of nature if he needed to do so to achieve a more important purpose.”

Ultimately, it wasn’t the evidence that held him back, but his pride. Collins wrote, “My desire to draw close to God was blocked by my own pride and sinfulness, which in turn was an inevitable consequence of my own selfish desire to be in control.” Understanding the incomparable value of exchanging his pride and control for God’s grace eventually led Collins to embrace Christ as Lord.

Dr. Collins’ story mirrors so many in that we realize it’s not the evidence that prevents us from believing in the resurrected Christ. It’s often our pride.

For everyone listening to this message... Will you trust in Jesus? Right now. Will you accept His free gift of forgiveness of sin and new life? Right now. I pray that you will do so, and receive new life in Jesus Christ.

And, for you who are believers in Jesus Christ, let me encourage you to tell the good news of Christ’s victory over death to your family and friends.