Good morning Life Fellowship. Sometimes we go through difficulties in our lives and we go into the presence of God and we seek Him in prayer. And one of the most excruciating things that can happen to us is when we are met with silence - that sense of feeling God forsaken. Maybe you are looking for employment after being unemployed for quite some time. Your bank account is depleting rapidly. You go into God s presence asking Him to please help you find a job. And it feels as if you are knocking on the floor of Heaven and you begin to wonder if God cares about your plight. Or maybe you are in relational difficulties and you ask God to help you by intervening and to give you a sense of perspective. And when change doesn t take place you find yourself getting desperate and anxious and wondering where God is. Maybe you are going through an emotional trial that could be spiritual warfare or it could be desperation, anxiety, fear or addiction. You want help and you ask God to give you a daily reprieve. But you feel as though you are afflicted for life. There are these situations that you and I go through whereby if we are being honest there are moments where we understand what it is like to feel God forsaken, to wonder, God, where are you? And it is in those seasons that we go through where we grope and we can t find a sense of where God is in our lives that we begin to get really desperate and anxious. And it is also those moments where we can get ourselves into a lot of trouble because we begin to take life into our own hands. In our impatience we get more and more frustrated until we can brim over with resentment toward God. In fact sometimes we end up disillusioned in our relationship with God. Not because He isn t faithful to us, but because we have a skewed understanding of what it means for Him to be faithful. And so in our false theologies, whereby our minds, our thoughts, and our emotions get in the way, we start to sort of project our theology on God, and it isn t Biblically grounded. As a result we end up getting disillusioned in our life because we expect God to operate a certain way. And when He doesn t we are met with existential angst. I don t know what you are going through today, but I know that if you are like me, we are made of this human stuff. And I know that life can be difficult. Being a Christian is no cake walk. Jesus said, If anyone comes after me he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. Now I don t know about you but I don t like (Number One) denying myself. And (Number Two) I certainly don t want to carry a cross. And (Number Three) I don t want that as my daily existence. Nevertheless we are told that in the midst of self-denial, when we lose our life we will find our life, that in carrying a cross we meet God in the midst of our suffering. So whatever it is that you are going through today that makes you feel God forsaken, I am hopeful by the end of this message you won t feel that way. Page 1 of 13 pages 3/4/2018
I want to invite you to turn in your Bibles to Psalm 22. This is a great Psalm. We started a series several years ago called, A Journey Through the Psalms, and the way we tackle teaching through the book of Psalms is sort of a place that we come back to from time to time in between our other series. If we are walking through one series and we have three or four weeks before we begin another series we may jump back into, A Journey Through the Psalms. So that is what we are doing here. Keep in mind that the book of Psalms was written over about a thousand year period between about 1500 and 500 BC. Psalm 22 is believed by many commentators to be written by David. And when you approach the book of Psalms they are a genre in their own right. There are different types of Psalms. There are thanksgiving Psalms, there are praise Psalms and there are confessional Psalms like Psalm 32 or Psalm 51. There are Psalms of lament and there are Psalms that are Messianic in nature. When we come to a Psalm like todays, Psalm 22, it is helpful for us to understand the way it is structured. It is a Psalm that is quoted several times by the New Testament writers, and application is made to the person of Jesus. And in particular what He experienced on the cross. It was referred to so much by New Testament writers that early church leaders began to refer to it as the Fifth Gospel, and that is not a bad title. And some have said about this particular Psalm that the author was not David. And the way they reason that is as follows. They say that when we look at the life of David if we are to search out the Scriptures we are hard pressed to be able to find a story that correlates to this execution scene in Psalm 22. Though they can see different times where David was struggling, that he was derided, that he was on the run, this scene doesn t seem to square up. So some would choose to say they are not sure who the author is of Psalm 22, or they would go with someone else. But you could equally say that the Bible doesn t record every incident of David s life. So David certainly could have gone through a season like this. And just because we can t find it in another spot it doesn t mean David didn t have a day or a season in his life like we are going to look at today. Charles Spurgeon talked about this Psalm as being a Psalm of the Cross, because it so mirrors what Jesus experienced at Calvary. But here is the way that I want to teach this. First of all I think we owe it to ourselves to look at it basically in its original context. So I am going to take it as King David who is going through this. But then it has typology all over the place where it points to Christ making it a Messianic Psalm. So then we will look at it again as describing the greater King David, namely Jesus. So what we will do then is we will see how David felt forsaken and I will draw out some applications that we can learn from this text today in our own lives about our Page 2 of 13 pages 3/4/2018
struggles and our wrestling with God. And then I will look at it from a Messianic perspective. We are going to look at this Psalm through three separate sets of lens. We are going to zero in and check out David. Then we are going to step back and zoom in and land on ourselves. And then finally we are going to look at how it could be Christ in this Psalm, and how the New Testament writers applied this Psalm to Jesus. So let s jump in and check out Psalm 22. Beginning in verse one it says, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Now what I love first of all is David is calling out to God. David is this great warrior. He is a great king, but he is also a poet. He is a mystic and he is someone who is both head and heart. He is a great strategic thinker, but he has the heart of a poet, the heart of an artist. As a result he understood how to feel deeply and think deeply. He was a person who understood the war of emotions and the war of his thoughts. He was not either/or. He was high feeler or high thinker and we can see the way that he approaches God in his prayers as a desperate prayer warrior. So David goes into the presence of God. He is known as a man after God s own heart. That is the kind of warrior and poet position that he writes from, from that kind of perspective. So he says, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groanings? The way this Psalm is structured is the first 21 verses are about the trial, and then when we get to verse 22 to the end it is about the triumph. So let s watch how a man in anguish goes into the presence of God and meets him there. Now there is a bit of irony in this according to one commentator by the name of Allen Ross. And the irony is this, my God should not be forsaking me. It is his God; it is personal. He is in relationship. But my God feels as though He has forsaken him. And something else I love about David is wrapped up in three letters. What word do you think I am zeroing in on right now? It is the word WHY. David is authentic to the core. He is vulnerable. He is transparent. He lays his heart out there and asks, Why God? And it is the sound of the voice that we hear with Job in his complaints. It is the sound of the voice that we hear with Habakkuk. It is the sound of the desperation that we hear when the apostles flee. And it is the word of Jesus on the cross when He says, Why? And I believe so often we feel like we have to walk around as packaged Christians, talking as if everything is A-Okay, like we have our lives together, but guess what? None of us have our lives together. We get into this thing called Christianity by admitting that we are jacked up, by admitting that we are all hosed apart from Christ. And then we spend the rest of our Christian lives like we have it all together. But we Page 3 of 13 pages 3/4/2018
don t have it all together. If we think we have it all together then we are deceived. And the problem of being deceived is we don t know we are deceived. So when we think about the Scriptures then, I love it that David goes Why God, because we see this honesty bursting from him over and over again. He is saying God was his God, they were in relationship, but he doesn t understand Him right now. He doesn t understand the way God operates. He is asking for help. Now what I love about David is first of all he remembers that in the midst of his despair he knows he is in a relationship. And he remembers that in this relationship he can go freely and honestly before God. So principles are beginning to be shown to let us know that when we suffer we are not to lose sight that we are in relationship with a caring God. When we suffer we are not to shut down our prayer life but we are to lean more and share our despair in the presence of God. See David could have easily said, That s it. I m done. I m through with you, God because you haven t met my needs. He could have gotten angry, frustrated or disappointed but he doesn t do that. Instead he leans in, he presses in. Now I don t know about you but sometimes in my life and prayer time I know what it is like to feel like my prayers are just hitting the ceiling. I can feel like, God, where are you? What is going on? Please just show up right now. I know that earlier in my life I remember one time just sitting in a room praying and feeling so distant from Him. And then I started sensing Him letting me know He was with me, even if I hadn t felt His presence. God wants us to continue to pursue Him because anyone can chase His heart when they feel His presence, but it takes faith to pursue Him when we don t feel Him. I was just trying to put words to what I sensed Him showing me that morning. I think there are seasons where we will be led into the dark night of the soul. There are seasons where we will wander in the darkness. There are seasons where we will feel like we are walking in the horror of loneliness, where God will seem detached, absent or shy leaving us to squirm in our despair. Maybe we feel like we are not growing, or like nothing is happening. Yet it is in such seasons where the deepest richest most fruitful work can begin to happen. Sometimes we want to think that there will not be a lot of suffering if we are Christians and we are legit with God. But there have been many well-known Christians who have suffered from depression. In fact I have a list of some of these. John Henry Joad was a pastor in the early 20 th century and he said this: You seem to imagine I have no ups and downs but just a level and lofty stretch of spiritual attainment with unbroken joy. By no means! I am often perfectly wretched and everything appears most murky. Page 4 of 13 pages 3/4/2018
John Knox was a great preacher in Scotland hundreds of years ago and he said this: Lord Jesus, receive my spirit and put an end to this miserable life. Adoniram Judson was America s first foreign missionary and he said this after losing his wife: God is to me the great unknown, I believe in Him, but I find Him not. Note his honesty. Or how about Jeremiah who wrote Lamentations as well as the book of Jeremiah? He was the weeping prophet and he said this: Cursed be the day in which I was born. And there is Elijah who said, It is enough. Now Lord, take my life. You see spiritual leaders are often expected to be perfect and they are put on a platform where they are not able to wrestle in their own flesh. I shared a few weeks ago that I know what it is like to be a tortured soul and I know that created a little bit of panic in some people. What are you tortured about, bro? Well, there are lots of times I have a lot of joy in my life too. But when you have a disposition like mine where you are prone to anxiety, where you may have experienced seasons of depression, sometimes for unexplainable reasons. I take comfort knowing that there have been other people like I have shared that have experienced things like this. I have shared with you about Charles Spurgeon being carried out of town by one of his deacons for a couple of days to go spend time in a cabin until he could get himself sorted out. Or Soren Kierkegaard who experienced much angst. Or John Bunyan who knew what it felt like to feel so weary. So we are in this spiritual warfare and we feel things that are hard for us sometimes. I go to that place with you to tell you these things because the church is a hospital for the sick. We need to be able to say from this place right here that life is hard and it hurts and is confusing. I can tell you as a pastor that I know what it is like to fight horrifically with addiction in my life. God has helped me through so much of that. I know what it is like to be battling doubts in my life so much that I have wondered, God, where are you? I know what it is like to have intense fellowship with my wife. And I know what it is like to be confused about reading a parent book and still not knowing how to parent my kids. And I know what it feels like to open my mouth when I should have kept it shut. And I know what it feels like to make poor decisions as a leader. I know what it feels like to have thoughts swirling around in my head that I wished weren t. I know what it feels like to feel like Elijah and just say, Take this pitiful life. I know what it feels like to look at a person who is 40 years older than me and have thoughts where I wish I was 85 years old because that would be that much closer to getting to heaven. I know what it is like to look at someone who is young dying of cancer and feel such depression in my soul for them. I know what it is like to wake up in the morning and at times to know it is going to take God s help for me to get out of bed because I feel like I need a fresh perspective. Page 5 of 13 pages 3/4/2018
That may scare some of you, but I am a flawed, imperfect, jacked up, gospel needing pastor who needs other people in my life. And I don t know about you but misery loves company. So if you are looking for a place where it is okay to come with your warts and all, you have found the right place. I am not going to be scared off by the things that you feel ashamed of; rather I am going to tell you about a God who can comfort you in the midst of your shame and despair. Back to Psalm 22 where it says, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groanings? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest. You know what I love as well? He does not only go to a personal God, but he goes persistently. He keeps at it. He is tenacious. And that is what we need to do. I know what it is like to just say, You know what, forget about it, I am going on prayer sabbatical. I am taking a little break here and I am just going to try and figure you out in my head. But that never works! God has given me a simple way to live and that is to follow Jesus, but I am a complicated person. And I complicate the simple message, Follow me. Now in verse 3 his perspective is going to begin to change. Yet you are holy. He remembers who God is and that He is holy. Enthroned on the praises of Israel. Why? Because 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. I love that when we struggle meeting God in our despair it is the time when we need to be good historians. We need to get back and remember God s faithfulness and how He worked through others in the Scriptures. See, that is what the author is doing here. Sometimes God is a Red Sea God. He leads us to a wall and He makes us thing there is no way out. We can imagine Moses there at this great wall thinking, All right - I thought we had a promise. I thought we were being led out and this is what you led us to? It would have been tempting for Moses to say, Okay Israel, let s just fight to the death here. Let s turn around and go toward our enemies. But instead God tells Moses to lift up his staff and the sea parts. So sometimes God brings us to the very brink and we think we cannot hang on, and then when it feels as if the cord is going to snap while you hang from a cliff in despair, He says, I got you and I ve had you all along. Verse 4, In you our fathers trusted. So he is remembering how others walked with God through their trials. Now after remembering others the author says this in verse 6, But I am a worm and not a man. He is talking about how people perceive him, as a worm and not as a man. He is being treated not even humanlike. Scorned by mankind and despised by the people. All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me, they wag their heads; He trusts in the Lord; let Him deliver him; let Him rescue him, for he delights in Him. So he is being mocked, he is being blasted. Page 6 of 13 pages 3/4/2018
Verse 9, Yet you are He who took me from the womb; you made me trust you at my mothers breasts. On you was I cast from my birth, and from my mother s womb you have been my God. So what does the author do in this God forsaken experience? He goes to God. He remembers that he is in relationship. He is honest with God. He lays it out and asks why? Then he remembers historically how God has brought others through. He acknowledges the reality of his situation being treated like a worm and not a man. But then in verse 9 he remembers that God was with him ever since he was born. You see when our future looks like midnight and we cannot see ahead, sometimes the way forward is through the rear view mirror of our experiences and our encounters with God. And we move ahead by looking through the rear view mirror. And that is what the author does; he looks back to the beginning. And he is starting to draw some strength then from history, from theology, from going to the Scriptures and reminding himself about how God has led him through. And now he is finding strength to help others. Sometimes when you can t find strength in God or you can t find strength for yourself, we just need to hear God s stories from other people, and how God has led them through those difficulties. Verse 11, Be not far from me, for trouble is near, and there is none to help. No one is around to help him so this one is on God. Many bulls encompass me; strong bulls of Bashan surround me. He is applying animal language to the way the humans were treating him. They are acting like bulls and they encompass him. They open wide their mouths at me, like a ravening and roaring lion. I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint, my heart is like wax. He is physically messed up and he is emotionally messed up. His emotions are wearing down like wax. It is melted within my breast, my strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws, you lay me in the dust of death. What is he thinking? He thinks he is going to die. He goes on with some more animal like language. For dogs encompass me, a company of evildoers encircles me. Imagine being in his shoes for a moment. You have people around you and they are mocking you, they are physically beating you, they surround you and you feel like there is no way out. He goes on, They have pierced my hands and feet, and we will come back to that. I can count all my bones. He is emaciated. He is thirsty and he can count his ribs because he has not been eating. And they stare and gloat over me; they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots. 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! He recognizes in the midst of this that other people do not see him as human. They treat him like a dog. Yet he says this, My precious life. Do you know that your Page 7 of 13 pages 3/4/2018
life is precious this morning? You were created in God s image. You were fearfully and wonderfully made. And if you are sitting out here this morning wondering if you have any purpose, any direction in life, know that God has created you for something bigger in life than you can possibly imagine. That might not mean bigger like with a bigger wallet, or bigger like with a bigger job, but bigger from the standpoint of a future with Him forever. Bigger like having our guilt lifted. Bigger like knowing what our sense of purpose is. Bigger like having a Jesus directed life and the fulfilment of walking with Him. The author wants help, but he recognizes that his life is precious. Verse 21, Save me from the mouth of the lion! So he has talked about bulls, dogs and now lions. You have rescued me from the horns of the wild oxen! Notice that he says you have. Something has happened now. The tone is shifting. His prayer has been answered. You have rescued me. And now what he is going to do is get really excited in God and he is going to thrill in his rescue. As a result of being rescued he says this in verse 22, I will tell of your name to my brothers, in the midst of the congregation I will praise you. He is going public now. He is going all out and letting people know that God deserves the praise for this. You who fear the Lord, praise Him! All you offspring of Jacob, glorify Him, and stand in awe of Him, all you offspring of Israel! 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. Notice his perspective change. In other words he had felt God forsaken but now he realizes that he wasn t God forsaken after all. He felt as if God was hiding but now he realizes he wasn t hiding after all. His perspective is changing. And how is it changing? Through prayer, in honest prayer. Prayer is the place we go where we bring our understanding of Scriptures to God, where we bring our praises to Him, where we bring our trust to Him, where we bring our authenticity, where we bring our honesty, and then all of a sudden courage comes into place. God answered him and he is rescued. He is going to go and let people know this. And now this person who thought he was God forsaken will go around and encourage others. That is what God does. II Corinthians Chapter 1 and verse 4 says, Who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction. With all the things in my life like ADD, having an addict personality, OCD tendencies, anxiety disorders and depression, all these things I have wrestled with in my life, I still believe God has called me to have these things in my life so that I can share with others and hopefully comfort them in their afflictions. Sometimes I feel like I am going through something so that He will deepen me so that I can be part of the circle of compassion to others. Page 8 of 13 pages 3/4/2018
Suffering will make us compassion people. The more we suffer we will either get harder, or if we lean into God we will become very compassionate people. That is what God wants, a church to be a circle of compassion to a world in pain. We are to suffer to help others. And David is doing that, he is helping people out. Verse 25, From you comes my praise in the great congregation; my vows I will perform before those who fear Him. The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek Him shall praise the Lord! May your hearts live forever! All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord. Now he is recognizing that good can come out of this. He might suffer but people are going to turn to God. They are going to see how great He is. People are going to place their faith in Him and there is going to be worldwide salvation where people are going to want to know the God who delivers them. Verse 27 continues, And all the families of the nations shall worship before you. For kingship belongs to the Lord, and He rules over the nations. All the prosperous of the earth eat and worship; before Him shall bow all who go down to the dust, even the one who could not keep himself alive. Prosperity shall serve him; He shall be told of the Lord to the coming generation; they shall come and proclaim His righteousness to a people yet unborn, that He has done it. That He has finished it; He has completed it. So we have looked through these verses with our first lens as David. We have seen that this execution scene is going on and we see that he is struggling. He feels God forsaken but he goes from trial to triumph, from pity to praise, through the means of prayer. So let s step back and think about how this can apply to us. The next time we feel God forsaken here are some principles for us to remember. Next time we feel God forsaken we need to honestly express ourselves in our loneliness and fears to God through prayer. So if you are feeling lonely right now, if you are feeling depressed, if you are feeling God forsaken, honestly express that to Him. Tell Him what your fears are. Write those fears down, write what you are experiencing down. I have talked to you about this idea of clustering a little while ago and how I do that to help me with things that I focus on. Take a piece of paper and write the one issue you are struggling with. Is it loneliness? Write that down and then circle it. And then start making branches off from that circle like Why am I feeling lonely? And then that becomes your prayer guide. Tell God that is what you feel. This gets us in touch with ourselves. Second, the next time we feel God forsaken we need to draw strength from Scripture and others who have encountered God in the midst of their despair. You know one of the things that happens in Alcoholics Anonymous or in Narcotics Anonymous is when you are struggling you are supposed to pick the phone up and call your sponsor, or Page 9 of 13 pages 3/4/2018
call another person in the program and let them know what you are struggling with. Why? It is because they can give you strength from their own lives, how they pulled through that. In the same way in the church we can call out to each other and draw strength from one another. Third, we can reflect with gratitude upon God s faithfulness to us through the years. So when you are struggling again you can take out a journal and you can write down reflections of how God has been faithful to you in the past. So we just need to start writing those reflections down. See my brain is so forgetful of what God has done in my life that He can do something great and I soon forget it. Remember the Israelites miraculously crossed the Red Sea and then they started complaining and melting down their jewelry to dance around a golden calf. We forget so quickly unless we write those things down. And then the next time we are struggling or wondering where God is at, we can look at those reflections and remember how God has answered our prayers in the past. Next we need to remember the silence of God doesn t mean that God has forgotten us. Sometimes God pulls away to teach us to lean more in, to press in, to go after Him and to chase His heart. And then the final application for us is to remember when we are feeling God forsaken, to give God the glory whenever He delivers us from the seemingly undeliverable. And to give Him praise for that. That is what David did. So those are some applications for us to consider. We first looked through the lens of Psalm 22 as David. Then we extracted principles that we can learn from a second look. And now we need to use our third lens and think how this Psalm can apply to Jesus. Well Jesus applied this to Himself and the disciples applied it to Him as the scene at the cross. The way that we do this is we have cross references in some of our Bibles, and when you see those numbers which are cross references you can look up those verses. And a lot of times it will help point the way to the connections within Scripture. So let me make some connections for you. In Psalm 22 and verse 1 we say, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? In Matthew Chapter 27 and verse 46 it says, And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani? that is, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? That was an Aramaic phrase meaning, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? So what is Jesus doing? On the cross He is remembering Psalm 22 and seeing Himself in a typological way of fulfilling what is happening. You see David wasn t executed but the Messiah was. David was delivered but Jesus experienced death before the resurrection. Page 10 of 13 pages 3/4/2018
Another phrase found in Psalm 22 and verse 7 is They wag their heads. So where do we see that fulfilled in the New Testament? In Matthew Chapter 27 and verse 39 it says, And those who passed by derided Him, wagging their heads. They were wagging their heads in derision. Another place is in Psalm 22 and verse 8 where it says, He trusts in the Lord; let Him deliver Him; let Him rescue Him. And in Matthew Chapter 27 and verse 43 it says this pertaining to Jesus, He trusts in God; let God deliver him now. They mocked Him while He was on the cross. Oh yeah, come on, where is your God? If you are really the Son of God why aren t you being delivered? Or how about Psalm 22 and verse 18 where it says, They divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots. And an unbelievable fulfilment is found in Matthew Chapter 27 and verse 35, And when they had crucified Him, they divided His garments among them, casting lots. See David didn t realize that his life in the immediate was going to be so pointedly fulfilled in the Messiah. And that is why Psalm 22 is called a Messianic Psalm. Another connection is found in Psalm 22 and verse 31 where it ends with, He has done it, but on the cross in John Chapter 19 and verse 30, Jesus says, It is finished. In other words at the end of Psalm 22 it is done, so get the word out, salvation has happened. In Psalm 22 and verse 15 it says, My tongue sticks to my jaws, meaning He was thirsty. And in John Chapter 19 and verse 28, Jesus says, I thirst. Or how about this one? Psalm 22 and verse 16 says, They have pierced my hands and feet. Folks, the Romans aren t in charge yet at the time Psalm 22 was written. There was no such thing as crucifixion then. But in a bizarre way we see this verse saying, They have pierced my hands and feet. We come to the New Testament and Thomas, after Jesus rises from the dead doubts that He did, and it says in John Chapter 20 and verse 25, Unless I see in His hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into His side, I will never believe. Verse 26, Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, Peace be with you. Then he said to Thomas, Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe. Thomas answered him, My Lord and my God! Jesus said to him, Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. And that is us. Do you believe in the Lord Jesus today? Are you trusting in Him? Psalm 22 and verse 22 says, I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will praise you. What was David doing? He was saying that he Page 11 of 13 pages 3/4/2018
was going to let other people know of His salvation and how He rescued him. What does Jesus say? In Hebrews Chapter 2 and verse 12, I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise. In other words when Jesus died, He ascended, and after he was resurrected He would tell people He was alive. The Bible of Knowledge Commentary put out by Dallas Theological Seminary has this phrase that I extracted, The interesting feature of this Psalm (speaking of Psalm 22) is that it does not include one word of confession of sin, and no imprecation against enemies. It is primarily the account of a righteous man who is being put to death by wicked men. David was being challenged unjustly, but in a broader way it fits. So when we think about this Psalm as Messianic it describes how Jesus was rejected, how Jesus was thirsty, how Jesus was flogged, how Jesus felt God forsaken, how Jesus hands and feet were pierced, and ultimately how Jesus was the perfect one dying in our place. I think this is a fitting time for communion. We are just going to take a few minutes and think about the execution scene of the cross. We are going to think about how Jesus was forsaken so that we could be forever with God. Communion is for believers. If you are a guest with us today and you don t have a relationship with Jesus, we are so glad that you are here with us. There is no shame if you don t feel comfortable taking communion today. But if you are not a believer, you can place your faith in Him today. If you believe that Jesus who knew no sin died on a cross for all of our sins and if you believe He died in your place and rose from the grave, then by faith if you are willing to trust in Him, ask Him to forgive you of all your sins and every area of your life you have fallen short of His standard. If you are willing to trust Him today then communion would be very appropriate. What communion represents is the execution scene of Christ, His death whereby He died on our behalf. Please take a few moments right now and silently think about today s message as the elements are passed. On the night Jesus was betrayed, He took the bread and broke it and He said, This is my body. He was saying that this represented His body which was going to be laid down for us. Then He said, Take and eat in remembrance of me. Then Jesus took the cup and He said, This is the blood of the New Covenant. In the Old Testament there was a sacrificial system. Jesus fulfilled the Law where before people would bring animal sacrifices as payment for their sins. Jesus was the perfect sacrifice who had never sinned. And He said, Drink in remembrance of me. Let s pray. Page 12 of 13 pages 3/4/2018
We thank you Jesus for shedding your blood on the cross for us, for loving us and for dying for our sins. We give you praise today. In Jesus name. Amen. The preceding transcript was completed using raw audio recordings. As much as possible, it includes the actual words of the message with minor grammatical changes and editorial clarifications to provide context. Hebrew and Greek words are spelled using Google Translator and the actual spelling may be different in some cases. Page 13 of 13 pages 3/4/2018