⭐💡🕊️💒✝️ happy good friday ❗❗ psalms 22 the agony of the forsaken one.
Posted : 29 Mar, 2024 09:26 AM
1. (1-2) The cry of the forsaken.
My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?
Why are You so far from helping Me,
And from the words of My groaning?
O My God, I cry in the daytime, but You do not hear;
And in the night season, and am not silent.
a. My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me: This psalm begins abruptly, with a disturbing scene: someone who knows and trusts God is forsaken, and cries out to God in agony.
i. This is a Psalm of David, and there were many instances in the life of David where he might write such an agonized poem. Before and after taking the throne of Israel, David lived in seasons of great danger and deprivation.
ii. While this psalm was certainly true of King David in his life experience, it – like many psalms – is even truer of Jesus the Messiah than of David. Jesus deliberately chose these words to describe His agony on the cross (Matthew 27:46).
iii. “We can be fairly certain that Jesus was meditating on the Old Testament during the hours of his suffering and that he saw his crucifixion as a fulfillment of Psalm 22 particularly.” (Boice)
iv. “I doubt not that David, though he had an eye to his own condition in diverse passages here used, yet was carried forth by the Spirit of prophecy beyond himself, and unto Christ, to whom alone it truly and fully agrees.” (Poole)
b. My God, My God: This opening is powerful on at least two levels. The cry “My God” shows that the Forsaken One truly did have a relationship with God. He was a victim of the cruelty of men, but the cry and the complaint is to God – even My God – and not to or against man. Second, the repetition of the plea shows the intensity of the agony.
i. “Then it was that he felt in soul and body the horror of God’s displeasure against sin, for which he had undertaken.” (Trapp)
⭐💡🕊️💒✝️ happy good friday ❗❗ psalms 22 the agony of the forsaken one.
Posted : 29 Mar, 2024 09:29 AM
Why have You forsaken Me? There is a note of surprise in this cry and in the following lines. The Forsaken One seems bewildered; “Why would My God forsake Me? Others may deserve such, but I cannot figure out why He would forsake Me.”
i. We may easily imagine a situation in the life of King David where he experienced this. Many times he found himself in seemingly impossible circumstances and wondered why God did not rescue him immediately.
ii. Yet beyond David and his life, this agonized cry and the intentional identification of Jesus with these words are some of the most intense and mysterious descriptions of what Jesus experienced on the cross. Jesus had known great pain and suffering (both physical and emotional) during His life. Yet He had never known separation or alienation from God His Father. At this moment He experienced what He had not yet ever experienced. There was a significant sense in which Jesus rightly felt forsaken by God the Father on the cross.
iii. On the cross, a holy transaction took place. God the Father regarded God the Son as if He were a sinner. As the Apostle Paul would later write, God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. (2 Corinthians 5:21)
iv. Yet Jesus not only endured the withdrawal of the Father’s fellowship, but also the actual outpouring of the Father’s wrath upon Him as a substitute for sinful humanity. “This was the blackness and darkness of his horror; then it was that he penetrated the depths of the caverns of suffering.” (Spurgeon)
v. “To be forsaken means to have the light of God’s countenance and the sense of his presence eclipsed, which is what happened to Jesus as he bore the wrath of God against sin for us.” (Boice)
vi. “It was necessary that he should feel the loss of his Father’s smile, – for the condemned in hell must have tasted of that bitterness – and therefore the Father closed the eye of his love, put the hand of justice before the smile of his face, and left his Son to cry, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’” (Spurgeon)
vii. Horrible as this was, it fulfilled God’s good and loving plan of redemption. Therefore Isaiah could say Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him (Isaiah 53:10)
⭐💡🕊️💒✝️ happy good friday ❗❗ psalms 22 the agony of the forsaken one.
Posted : 29 Mar, 2024 09:30 AM
viii. At the same time, we cannot say that the separation between the Father and the Son at the cross was complete. Paul made this clear in 2 Corinthians 5:19: God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself at the cross.
d. Why have You forsaken Me? There is a definite question in these words of David, and as Jesus appropriated them to Himself on the cross. What Jesus endured on the cross was so complex, so dark, and so mysterious that it was, at the moment, beyond emotional comprehension.
i. Spurgeon considered this question with an emphasis on the word You. “‘Thou:’ I can understand why traitorous Judas and timid Peter should be gone, but thou, my God, my faithful friend, how canst thou leave me? This is worst of all, yea worse than all put together. Hell itself has for its fiercest flame the separation of the soul from God.” (Spurgeon)
ii. We can imagine the answer to Jesus’ question: Why? “Because, My Son, You have chosen to stand in the place of guilty sinners. You, who have never known sin, have made the infinite sacrifice to become sin and receive My just wrath upon sin and sinners. You do this because of Your great love, and because of My great love.”
iii. Then the Father might give the Son a glimpse of His reward – the righteously-robed multitude of His people on heaven’s golden streets, “all of them singing their redeemer’s praise, all of them chanting the name of Jehovah and the Lamb; and this was a part of the answer to his question.” (Spurgeon)
e. Why are You so far from helping Me? David knew what it was like to feel the presence and the deliverance of God and had experienced such many times before. Every prior time of help made this dramatic absence of God’s help more devastating. Worse yet, there seemed to be no explanation for the lack of God’s help; thus the question, “Why?”
i. No doubt David experienced this, but only as a shadow compared to how Jesus experienced this. Prior to the cross, Jesus lived every moment in conscious fellowship with God the Father, combined with a continual dependence upon the help of both the Father and the Spirit. At the cross, Jesus felt helpless, as it seemed that the Father was so far from helping Him.
f. O My God, I cry in the daytime, but You do not hear: A further dimension of David’s agony was the fact that he made repeated, constant appeals to God and yet felt utterly unheard. His groaning was unanswered, his cry ignored.
i. David certainly experienced this; the greater Son of David experienced it in a far greater degree. On the cross Jesus felt abandoned by the Father, and felt that His groaning and cries went unanswered
