Let us turn to the psalm we read,
Psalm 22. And I want to direct you to the
opening words. It's a portion, of course, that
I'm sure is well known to us all. We've considered it on previous
occasions. These remarkable words, prophetic
words in Psalm 22, verse 1. My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken
me? Why art thou so far from helping
me and from the words of my roaring? And the words, as I'm sure we're
aware, are taken up by the Lord Jesus in his sufferings there
upon the cross. was struck just then as we were
singing that lovely hymn of Isaac Watts, 164, and that second verse,
in loud complaints he spends his breath while hosts of hell
and powers of death and all the sons of malice join to execute
their cursed design. Surely the hymn writer was thinking
in particular of these words, these prophetic words taken up
by the Lord Jesus, as I said there, as he did indeed suffer
at the hands of God upon the cross. We have them in Matthew
27 at verse 46, but also we find them in Mark's account of the
sufferings and the crucifixion and death of Christ in Mark 15,
34. And so to examine once again
something of the significance of what is being said. It is
the cry of dereliction. It's the Lord Jesus Christ forsaken. How remarkable is that, that
the Lord Jesus Christ should feel so forsaken of God's. My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me? Why art thou so far from helping
me, and from the words of my roaring? O my God, I cry in the
daytime, but thou hearest not, and in the night sees it, and
am not silent. Now, we were considering the
previous chapter, or the previous Psalm, I should say, only last
Lord's Day, when we looked at those words. beginning of verse
6 in Psalm 21 and I said that that's also a prophetic Psalm
speaking of the Lord Jesus thou has made him most blessed for
ever or as the margin says and it was a margin reading that
we really considered that have set Him to be blessings for ever. And we thought then of the Lord
Jesus Christ as that one who is the great High Priest and
the work of the priests, how they make sacrifices, they present
prayers, and they also of course were those who were to pronounce
the Lord's blessings upon the people. And we have that great
Blessing, that Aaronic Blessing at the end of Numbers 6, when
the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto Aaron, and unto his
sons, saying, On this wise shall ye bless the children of Israel,
saying unto them, The Lord bless thee, and keep thee. The Lord
make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee. The
Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.
And they shall put my name upon the children of Israel and I
will bless them. Oh, the blessing, it's the putting
of God's name upon the people. And what is that name? Well,
it's that threefold name, the Lord's. The Lord's. The Lord's. It's God's. It's the trinity
of persons in the Godhead, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. What a blessing. and it is the
blessing that comes from the priest and there is blessing
here of course from him who is the fulfillment of the Aaronic
priesthood the Lord Jesus Christ and there is great blessing in
all that he bore of that curse that he should be forsaken that
we might know reconciliation with God that he should feel
himself to be at a distance from God that we might be brought
near unto God and how is it? It is, of course, by sacrifice. And that was the great work of
the priest. And isn't this psalm a remarkable
description? The prophetic description of
all that was to befall the Lord Jesus there on the cross at Calvary
when he made that great sin-atoning sacrifice. And he's not only
the priest, or a greater priest than those
of Aaron. He's a priest after the order
of Melchizedek. But he's not only the priest,
he's also the sacrifice, the Lamb, slain from the foundation
of the world. The one of whom John the Baptist
spoke, Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the
world. And what do we see here? We see
something of the physical sufferings that he endured, and he endured
Mass at the hands of the people. Verse 6, he says, I am a worm,
a no man, a reproach of men, and despised of the people. And then again at verse 14, I
am poured out like water, all my bones are out of joint, my
heart is like wax, it is melted in the midst of my bowels, my
strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue cleaveth to my
jaws, and thou hast brought me into the dust of death." Oh,
how he suffered so much, so much before man, how they compassed
him. Verse 12, he says, Many balls
have compassed me, strong balls of bastion have beset me round,
they gape upon me with their mouth as a ravening and a roaring
lion. Again, at verse 16, dogs encompass
me, the assembly of the wicked have enclosed me, they pierce
my hands and my feet. I may tell all my bones, they
look and stare upon them. Oh, what a sight! What sufferings! what cruelty they showed to him
there upon the cross at Calvary. But it's interesting, isn't it,
when we come to this psalm we see that he first speaks not
so much of those physical sufferings, all that he had to endure in
the body, but he speaks first and foremost of his spiritual
sufferings. He speaks of all that he had
to endure as he was made the great sacrifice for sins, all
that he has to suffer at the hand of God. My God, my God,
why hast thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far from helping
me and from the words of my roaring? Oh, there was great inward suffering,
surely, in the soul of this man, the Lord Jesus. What darkness
he felt in his own soul, the hidings of the face of God as
he comes to make that great sacrifice. This is the chief of all the
sufferings that he knew there. He was forsaken. He was forsaken
of his God. This is the wonder really of
these Psalms, these Messianic Psalms. because it's as if the
veil is drawn aside, we've said it before, and in these Psalms
we're permitted to gaze into the very soul of Christ. We have
the description of course in the Gospels concerning all that
he had to suffer there at Calvary, all the detail is to be found. We have a four-fold account as
well, great emphasis placed upon that death. The significance
of it is obedience unto death, even the death of the cross.
But when we come back into the Old Testament and consider the
content of these Psalms, we're looking into His soul, and that's
what we have here in the text before us this morning. His soul, we read in Isaiah 53,
shall make an offering for sin. Again, what does he say here
in verse 20? And there we have that parallelism
that is the peculiarity of Hebrew poetry. It's the same truth that's
to be found in each of those clauses. And so, gives an alternative reading,
my only one, my soul, my only one. Oh, it's the sufferings
of his soul that we have here. And so as we come to look at
these words in this first verse of the psalm, just two headings
this morning, first of all to consider the cry of the Lord
Jesus Christ, and then to consider that cry
as his prayer. The cry is his prayer and yet
is in such agonies that it is almost impossible to give adequate
expression to the desires of his soul. First of all then to
see what we have here in the cry of dereliction. His desertion there upon the
cross. And what is it? Well, it's the penalty of sin.
That's what he is suffering, the penalty of sin. Christ's death there upon the
cross was very much a penal death. It was no ordinary death. It
was the death of one who was reckoned to be a criminal. And
so what do we have in the New Testament? We have something
of a trial. It's a mockery of a trial as
he brought before the authorities. And what was the authority? Well,
Palestine was of course part and parcel of the Roman Empire. It was a province of that great
empire. And there was one Pontius Pilate
who was the governor. and the Lord is arranged before
him. As we see in John's account,
John 18, 28, they led Jesus from Caiaphas, the high priest, onto
the hall of judgment. And it was early. And they themselves,
that is, the Jews, went not into the judgment, lest they should
be defiled, that they might eat the Passover. The pilot then
went out on to them and said, what accusation bring ye against
this man? They answered and said unto him,
if he were not a malefactor, we would not have delivered him
up unto them. So, there's a trial here. And what is the charge? Well,
we have it later there in chapter 19 of John, in verse 7. We have
a law, and by our law he ought to die, because he made himself
the Son of God. That was the accusation. They
accused him of blasphemy, because he said he was the Son of God. That's what he was, that's what
he is. That's what he ever has been.
He is the Eternal Son, the Only Begotten. of the Father, full
of grace and truth. But they knew not what they did.
And the Lord, even from the cross, uttered those words, those gracious
words, Father forgive them, they know not what they do. Oh, this
is all the fulfillment, of course, of what we have here in this
22nd Psalm, as well as other parts of the prophetic Scriptures.
But what he is enduring here, even as he cries out in our text,
My God! My God, why hast thou forsaken
me? Why art thou so far from helping
me and from the words of my roaring? This is the penalty that he must
endure as the one who is making the great offering for sin. And what is the penalty to sin? Well, two aspects I would mention
this morning. Firstly, it is clear that death
is the consequence of the fall. Remember what the Lord God says
to Adam there in the Garden of Eden in Genesis chapter 2 concerning
that tree of the knowledge of good and evil, in the day that
thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. Dying thou shalt
die. There was A spiritual death that
came upon Eve and then upon Adam immediately. They disobeyed the
commandment of God and they ate that forbidden fruit. Dying they
shall die. That spiritual death was immediate
and then in due course physical death also came upon them after
many hundreds of years. And then ultimately, if there
is no repentance, there will be the eternal death, the soul
that's in us. It shall die. The wages of sin
is death. There is that that's spoken of
in Revelation chapter 20 as the second death. That's eternal death. That's
hell. And what is it that the Lord
Jesus Christ is suffering? He is suffering death, Christ-tasted
death, we're told in Hebrews 2.9. Remarkable, really, because there
was no cause of death in Him. In the complex person He is,
He's the God-man. There's the divine nature. He's
God. There's a human nature. He's
man. But even as a man, of course, there's no cause of death in
his human nature, because he's a sinless one. There's no original
sin. He's preserved from all original
sin. It's that holy thing that is born of the Virgin Mary. His human nature really was immortal. And yet he tasted death. A real
death. And he knew all the blackness
and darkness. What are we told in Matthew's
account from the sixth hour? There was darkness over all the
land until the ninth hour. And then the Lord utters these
words, Eli lama sabachthani, my God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me? He knew death. And that's the
penalty that comes as the consequence, as the curse of sin. But there's another aspect to
that penalty and it's this, it's the separation. It's a separation
that he has to endure. Spiritual death is that, it is
separation. And we see it, don't we, when
we read the solemn accounts of Genesis 3 and the fall of our
first parents and the entrance of sin into that creation that
God had pronounced to be very good. Now all despoiled because
of man and because of man's disobedience. And immediately after the fall,
what do Adam and Eve do? They want to hide from God. There
in Genesis 3.8, when the Lord God comes into the garden, as
was His words, there was communion, of course, between God and His
creatures when they came pristine from the hand of their Maker.
And God would come and there would be communion, but now God
comes, and what do they do? They try to hide away. They don't
want to be with God. They are alienated from God.
And then so solemnly there at the end of that third chapter,
doesn't the Lord God drive the man and the woman out of the
garden? No more are they in paradise, but they are thrust out. For
there is separation, your iniquities have separated between you and
your God, and your sin hath hid his face from you. And in hell there is of course
that final separation. That is, we might say in many
ways, the principal suffering of hell. Think of the words of that great
church's theologian Augustine, that was made just for thyself.
Our souls are restless till they rest in the earth. Man, made
in God's image, created after God's likeness, man is made to
know God and to enjoy God. We have the words of the Shodokaticism,
don't we? What is the chief end of man?
Man's chief end is to know God and enjoy Him forever. What is there in hell? There's
a separation, an eternal separation between God and those poor creatures. As the Lord himself says when
he tells the parable of Lazarus and the rich man. And each of
them die and go to their appointed place. And there is the rich
man now suffering all the torments of separation. And there's a
great gulf fixed. That's a word that we have there
in Luke 16, 26. There's a great gulf fixed. And there's no crossing that
gulf. There's an eternal separation. Oh, no wonder as the Lord Jesus
contemplates that cross and all that he must suffer there of
separation. He says, now is my soul troubled.
And what shall I say? Father, save me. He doesn't want this. He shrinks
from this in that sense. The Puritan John Flavel says
Christ was troubled as they in hell are troubled. My God, my
God, why hast thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far from helping
me and from the words of my roaring? He feels forsaken. But remember
the language that we have in another Psalm. Previously in
Psalm 16, verse 10, Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell. neither
wilt thou suffer thine holy one to see corruption." He did tell
us something of hell, and that awful separation. We know that those words at the
end of Psalm 16, of course, are again messianic, they speak of
the Lord Jesus quite clearly because both Peter and Paul in
the course of their ministry and their preaching in the Acts
of the Apostles, refer to the 16th Psalm. There in Acts 2 at
verse 27 following, on the day of Pentecost, as Peter preaches,
he refers to Psalm 16 having its fulfillment in Christ. And
again, also with Paul in Acts 13 at verse 35 following, he
likewise makes reference to those words. that we just directed
you to the end of Psalm 16? Therefore my heart is glad, my
glory rejoices, my flesh also shall rest in hope. For thou
wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine
Holy One to see corruption. Thou wilt show me the path of
life. In thy presence is fullness of
joy, at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore. Oh
Christ, I but He also rose again from the
dead. And that's the significance of
those words. There's not just the death of
the Lord Jesus, there's a rising again. He does not pray in vain. Verse 3, Thou art the Holy One,
O Thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel. Our fathers trusted
in Thy trust, and Thou didst deliver them. And the Lord knew
that, because he was a man of faith. But here, as in this cry,
this awful cry of dereliction, this sense, this feeling of being
forsaken, as in it we see the penalty that was due to sin,
death and separation, So also in these words we see the reality
of the sufferings of the Lord Jesus Christ. Sometimes I fear that because
we recognize that he is the Son of God and we think he's some
sort of superman, we're not to think like that. His human nature
was a real human nature. He was a very real man, he has
very deep feelings this man. And do we not see it here at
the end of the verse? What was his prayer? What was
his cry? He speaks of the words of mind
roaring. Why art thou so far from helping
me? And from the words of mind roaring. Remarkable words. when we see that they apply to
the Lord Jesus, that's how we prayed. Words failing as it were,
roaring in all the agonies of his soul. Now why? Why this depth of feeling? Because here we see him as that
one who has made sin. He has made him to be sin for
us who knew no sin. that we might be made the righteousness
of God in Him. Paul speaks of God sending His
own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin. In and of Himself He is the Sinless
One and yet He is made in the likeness of sinful flesh. We have That other remarkable 69th Psalm
that is as graphic really in the description of crucifixion
as is Psalm 22. Remember the opening words of Psalm 69,
Save me, O God, for the waters are coming unto my soul, I sink
in deep mire. where there is no standing I
am coming to deep waters where the floods overflow me I am weary
of my crying my throat is dried mine eyes fail while I wait for
my God this is how the Lord prays you see weary of crying his eyes
failing as he's waiting upon God to answer his prayers now
we know that Psalm 69 is a Messianic Psalm, look at verse
9 there, "...the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up, and the
reproaches of them that reproach thee are fallen upon me." And
that ninth verse of Psalm 69 is quoted twice in the New Testament. in John 2.17, and then again
in Romans 15.3. So we have the authority of the
New Testament to establish the fact that Psalm 69 applies to
the Lord Jesus. And what is the Lord saying there? Well, again, even in that Psalm,
we see Him as that One who has clearly made sin. Verse 5, He says, Thou knowest
my foolishness and my sins are not hid from Thee. My guiltiness
is not hid from Thee. Yet he was the innocent one.
How could he utter such words as those? My foolishness, my
sins, my guiltiness. Well, is it not the great truth
of substitutionary atonement? It's Jesus Christ in the sinner's
place. It's Christ, the sinless one,
that one who was preserved from every taint of original sin,
remember? In his birth, When Mary is told,
the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, the power of the Highest
shall overshadow thee, therefore also that holy thing that shall
be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. Oh, no taint
of original sin. We all sinned in Adam, but this,
why this is the last Adam, this is the second man, the Lord from
heaven. So different the first Adam's sin. but this is that
last Adam who never sins, as he was sinless in his birth,
so in his life holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners. In all things tempted, yes, tempted
like as we are yet, says Paul, without sin. Oh, he is that one,
you see, innocent, obedient, the suffering son of
God and yet he says my God, my God why hast thou forsaken me? me thy son, thine innocent son
thine obedient son, thy suffering son why hast thou forsaken me
he says Is he not that one who is always obedient, was always
obedient, obedient unto death? Even the death of the cross in
dying is obedient. He's accomplishing all that work,
he's fulfilling all this prophetic scripture to the very letter. And yet here he is, so forsaken. Oh, there's a mystery. There's
a great mystery in the words of this text, as we've said before. There is division, separation,
and yet, He is never anything less than He
always has been, which is the Eternal Son of God. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our
God is one Lord. God is one. and God is through us. You know,
this is the great mystery of our religion, isn't it? The doctrine
of God. You see, the doctrine of Judaism,
the God of Judaism is not the true God. The Jews do not worship
the true God today. When they go to their synagogues,
they do not worship the true God. Though they say they're monotheistic,
there's only one God, that's not the true God. And of course
the Muslims say exactly the same when they go to the mosque. They
say they're worshipping the only true God, just one God, not a
multitude of Gods. Allah is God, but that's a false
God. The true God is the Trinity. God the Father,
God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, that's not three gods, that's
three persons in one God. Here, O Israel, the Lord our
God is one Lord. There is no division in God. There can be no division in God. He is one, He is undivided, He
is indivisible. And yet, we have this remarkable experience
of the God-man, God manifest in the flesh. And I can't explain
it. I can't explain it. It's a mystery.
Christ feels utterly forsaken of God. This is the great I Am. Before Abraham was, he says in
John 8, before Abraham was I Am. And we have all those great I
am statements throughout John's Gospel. This is Jehovah, I am
the Lord, I change not. But what does he say in verse
6? I am a worm and no man, a reproach of men and despised of the people.
Oh what a contrast there he is in, between a worm and the great
I am. There's so much mystery here. in all that the Lord is suffering,
all that He is enduring, all that He is saying, all this terrible
cry, this sense of desertion and forsakenness. But let us turn for a while to
the second heading that I wanted to address this morning, and
that is the fact that this is the prayer of faith. All this text that we're looking
at is not just a cry, of dereliction and desertion.
It's a prayer, and it's a prayer of faith. And here we see the
reality of the human nature of the Lord Jesus Christ. He addresses
God, and how does he address God? He says, My God. My God. Oh yes, in some ways, as I said
just now, his prayer is nothing but roarings. But remember those
words of Hebrews 5 where we're told concerning him who in the
days of his flesh when he had offered up prayer with supplication
and strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him
from death and was heard in that he feared though he were a sign
yet learned the obedience by the thing that he suffered. Remarkable
words. Remarkable words concerning the
Lord Jesus and His communion with God. Strong crying, tears. That's
how He prays. But what do we have here? He
says, My God. My God. There's a paradox, isn't
there? This is the language of appropriation. He's my God. He's my God. And that means surely my God's
very near. He's mine. I've not lost him. And yet at the same time he feels
that his God is far away from him. That's the paradox. Oh, that's the paradox. and then
how the psalm goes on, verse 4, our fathers trusted in thee,
they trusted and thou didst deliver them, they cried unto thee and
were delivered, they trusted in thee and were not confounded
and see how in these verses three times we have that word trusted
isn't that what faith is? faith is trusting trusting in
God and Is it not the covenant gods that
they are trusting in? What is the reference to there
in verses 4 and 5? Isn't it to those words that
we have at the end of Exodus chapter 2 concerning the fathers? They're in all the awful bondage
that they had to endure in Egypt. Remember the end of Exodus 2,
it came to pass in the process of time that the king of Egypt
died. And the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage,
and they cried. And their cry came up unto God
by reason of the bondage, and God heard their groaning. And
God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with
Jacob, and God looked upon the children of Israel. And God had
respect on to there. And the margin you know there
at the end of that 25th verse gives the Hebrew as Nur. God looked upon the children
of Israel and God Nur. God Nur. Everything about them. They groaned just as the Lord
here you see is roaring. But surely in verses 4 and 5
the reference is to those events that we just read at the end
of Exodus, "...to our fathers trusted in thee." They trusted
and thou didst deliver them. They cried unto thee and were
delivered. They trusted in thee and were
not confounded. Where does the Lord draw his
comfort from? As a man he's drawn in comfort
from the Word of God. and the experiences of the Saints
of God. That's where he finds his comfort.
In verse 3 it says, But thou art holy. Oh God, He's the Holy One of Israel.
God is not a man that He should lie, nor the Son of Man that
He should repent. Has He said it? Shall He not
do it? Has He spoken it? Shall He not make it good? He's
the Holy One. He's true to Himself. He's true
to His own Word. He is the Lord. Again, verse 19, Be not thou
far from me, O LORD, all my strength haste thee to
help me. And observe how there in verse
19 it's LORD in capital letters. It's the covenant name, it's
Jehovah. It is the Great I Am. You see,
there are really two parts to this psalm. It divides quite
neatly into two parts. In the first part, from verse
1 right through to verse 21, we have, as it were, the cry
for help. We see Christ forsaken of God,
and yet making his prayer to his God. And then from verse
22 through to verse 31 we have God's answer. Deliverance. All deliverance comes ultimately
from the Lord. And it's verses 21 and 22 that
are so pivotal. Save me from the lion's mouth
for thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns. I will
declare thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the congregation
will I praise thee. What does he say there in verse
21? Thou hast heard me. O thou hast heard me from the
horns of the unicorns. Unicorns there gives the alternative
reading in the margin, the wild bulls. And remember what the
Lord has said previously, verse 12, many balls of compass me,
strong balls of bastion of beset me. They gape upon me with their
mouths as a ravening and a roaring lion. Again, verse 16, dogs of
compass me, the assembly of the wicked, of enclosement, they
pierce my hands and my feet. Oh, he says in verse 24, He hath not despised
nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, neither hath he
hid his face from him, but when he cried unto him he heard. You see, at the end of the psalm
we see that assurance, the Lord has heard him, the Lord has heard
him. What has he done? He has accomplished
all God's goodwill and pleasure and so right at the end he says
they shall come and shall declare his righteousness unto a people
that shall be born that he has done this and as I said last
week I think I did refer to this last verse of Psalm 22 last Lord's
Day and that word this is in italics the very last clause
of the Psalm literally says that He has done. He has done. It is finished. It is finished. All that we have in the Psalm
has had its accomplishment. It's all been fulfilled in the
Lord Jesus Christ. He was ever aware, you see, of
that work that was His in the Eternal Covenant and He would
finish the work. My meat is to do the will of
Him that sent me, He says, and to finish His work. And then
in that prayer of John 17, I have glorified you on the earth, I
have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. Then, there upon the cross as He comes
to the end, as He makes His soul an offering for sin, it is finished.
and he bowed the head and gave up the ghost. Oh, he accomplished
all that work, but how it cost him. Oh, how it cost him. No
stoic, this man. The man of deep, deep feelings. The man who agonizes in all his
prayers to his God there upon the cross. Oh, is there not something
for us to learn from the experience of this man, touched, we're told
with the feeling of our infirmities. Oh, we have not a high priest
which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities.
He was tempted in all points like as we are yet without sin. He felt forsaken. He felt forsaken. As I woke this morning very much
this psalm on my mind Suddenly it came, well you know, wasn't
this something of what we heard last Saturday a week ago yesterday? Think of the words of that text
that our friend Mr. Wells brought when he came to
preach at the anniversary. Isaiah 49, wasn't it? And verse
4, Zion said, The Lord hath forsaken thee, and my Lord hath forgotten
me." When I looked at the verse, I thought, well, isn't that strange?
It doesn't just say, the Lord hath forsaken me, but the next
clause, it's my Lord. You know, sometimes, you know,
you might quote it from memory and you misquote. I'd have said,
the Lord hath forsaken me and the Lord hath forgotten me. But
it doesn't say that, it says the Lord hath forsaken me, my
Lord. that it reminded me, you see,
of the words that we have in the text, My God, My God, why
hast thou forsaken me? Oh, here is one, you see, touched
with the feeling of our infirmities, tempted in all points like as
we are yet, without seeing. Therefore, That's the conclusion
the Apostle makes, isn't it, at the end of the fourth chapter
of Hebrews? Having spoken of Christ, the
great high priest touched with a feeling of our infirmities.
Therefore, let us come boldly to the throne of grace, that
we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
Isn't this what the Lord himself does? He's a pattern to us, you
see. When he fills these awful sufferings
when he feels so utterly forsaken what does he do? what is the
psalm? it's a prayer as so many of the
psalms he's praying, he's pleading with God, he's pleading for God's
deliverance verse 20 deliver my soul from the sword my darling
from the power of the dog save me from the lion's mouth for
thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns, the wild bulls,
I will declare thy name unto my brethren. In the midst of
the congregation will I praise thee. Ye that fear the Lord,
praise him. All ye the seed of Jacob, glorify
him and fear him. All ye the seed of Israel, for
he hath not despised, nor abhorred the affliction of the affliction.
Neither hath He hid His face from Him, but when He cried unto
Him, He heard. May the Lord be pleased to bless
His word to us. Amen. Let us conclude our worship
this morning as we sing the hymn 154, the tune is Hollingside
514. Much we talk of Jesus' blood, But how little's understood of
his suffering so intense? Angels have no perfect sense.
Who can rightly comprehend their beginning or their end? Tis to
God and God alone that their weight is fully known. 1 5 4
2 5 1 4