Psalm chapter 22. Psalm chapter
22. And we'll be, our text will be found
in verse 22 through verse 24. And the title of the message
this morning is the affliction of the afflicted. The affliction
of the afflicted. We're going to get that out of
the text here in just a second. Read this with me. Psalm 22, verse
22. 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 this is the cause of
praise the cause of glory and what Christ declares to all his
people and this is the reason for this declaration for he hath
not despised nor abhorred The affliction of the afflicted. Neither hid his face from him,
but when he cried unto him, he heard." The affliction of the
afflicted. Now, as you read this Psalm of
David, as all other Psalms and prophecies of the Old Testament,
we must be reminded that yes, David wrote this surely concerning
one of his afflictions, one of his troubles. But I tell you,
the Spirit of God intended much greater than the afflictions
of David. This psalm, like all other prophecies
and psalms, speak to us of the work and the person of Jesus
Christ. In this psalm, we need not have
to dig very far to find this truth. You can see it clearly
even from the first verse of this text, of the first verse
of this psalm, that it speaks of Christ and His crucifixion. Look at verse 1. My God, My God,
why hast Thou forsaken Me." And we know that these are the words,
the famous words of Christ, as He hung upon the cross, as He
suffered in agony. And look at verse 7 and 8. He
said, "...all they that see Me laugh Me to scorn, and shoot
out their lip, and shake their head, saying," listen, "...He
trusted on the Lord that He would deliver Him. Let Him deliver
Him, seeing He delighted in Him." Now, if you would go to Matthew
chapter 27, I believe 43, you would see these exact words being
said by the crowd who mocked Him as He hung upon the tree. And in verse 16, look at this,
"...for dogs have come past Me." The assembly of the wicked have
enclosed me. Listen to these. They pierced
my hands and my feet. Do you realize how many centuries
it was before the Romans invented the cruel torture of crucifixion? This matter of piercing hands
and feet and killing a man was not something known during David's
time. And yet here it is, the Lord
telling us how he should die. And before whom, who should do
it? Dogs! Gentiles! That's what Jews called
dogs. Gentiles. And so then, even in our text,
we would see that this is the Lord Jesus Christ speaking. He says, I will declare thy name
unto my brethren. Our Lord's speaking in declaration
of His victory over death. He's prophesying of the death
of the Lord Jesus Christ. But in verse 22, He is saying,
even though I'm going to die, even though all of this is going
to happen to me, He declares this solemn truth, I will declare. After my death, after my demise,
I will rise again and declare. unto my brethren." I will declare
the gospel unto my brethren. And throughout this psalm, we
hear him crying for help. We hear him crying unto God. Look at verse 2. He said, My
God, I cry in the daytime, and thou hearest not. Look at verse
11. He says, Be not far from me. You that were my God from my
mother's belly, I trusted you when I was in the womb of my
mother. We know David didn't do that. That was only Christ
that did that, lay a hold of him in his mother's womb. And
he said, I've trusted you from the beginning. Be not far from
me, for trouble is near and there is none to help. Verse 19, But
be not far from me, O Lord, my strength haste Thee to help deliver
my soul. Save me from the lion's mouth. You see him crying. You see him
suffering. You see him in agony and crying
out to God for deliverance. This is our Lord Jesus Christ. This is His agony. This is His
struggle. This is His death. And yet, here
is the hope. I will. I will declare I will declare thy name unto
my brethren in the midst the congregation while I praise thee
Now listen, surely the saints do praise God. Now this is true. David did praise God in the midst
of the congregation, did he not? That's what he's doing in this
psalm. That's what he's done his whole life. He praised the
Lord in the midst of the congregation. And we're doing that right now
as we're preaching the gospel. It is our desire to praise the
Lord in the midst of the congregation, no doubt. That's what we do every
Sunday. We desire to lift up Christ.
That's my desire. I desire to lift Him up. I desire
to hold Him out before you and say, behold, the Lamb of God,
and take away the sin of the world. That's what we're gathered
for, is to worship Christ. Not to be entertained, to worship
Christ. We're not here to tickle the
flesh and fancy our imagination. We're here to lift up Christ,
to honor Him. That's what we're here to do.
We're here to magnify Him in the congregation of the assembly. But I'll tell you, Paul emphasizes
that even this text that we've read is about Christ. Go over
to Hebrews chapter 2. I'll show you this very text
that we're going to see about the affliction of the afflicted
is concerning Christ. about him declaring the gospel
to his brethren. Look at verse 9. Paul says, but we see Jesus,
who was made a little lower than the angels. He was made a man.
For what purpose? For the suffering of death. Isn't that what this whole psalm's
about? The death of the Son of God. The death of Christ upon
the tree. The agony of Christ upon the
cross. But it's also something else,
crowned with glory and honor. Not only did He die and suffer
in the flesh, you Bethesda, He is now crowned with glory and
honor. God hath raised Him from the
dead, that He by the grace of God should taste death for every
man. Now again, we know that's not
every man without exception. We know that's every man without
distinction. That our Lord died for His people,
for it became Him. For whom are all things, and
by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory. Now isn't
it just becoming of God to deliver, to be gracious? Isn't it just
becoming of God to be victorious? Isn't that just part of His nature
and His person? Would you expect anything less
of God than to be victorious? You wouldn't. God is victorious
in everything. Otherwise, what kind of deity
would He be if He could fail? We don't worship such a God that
fails. We worship a God that's victorious
in everything He purposes. And this is His purpose, to bring
many sons to glory. Listen, to make the captain of
their salvation perfect through suffering. For both He that sanctifyeth
and they that are sanctified are all of one." Who is He that
sanctifyeth? It's Christ. It's Christ that
sanctifies. What is sanctification? It's
to make us holy. Who made us holy? Christ made
us holy. How? Through suffering, through
His death. He sanctified us. And we who
are sanctified are all of one. What does that mean? We're in
union with Him. We're one with Him. of which cause he is not ashamed
to call them brethren." Because of this, because of his death,
he is not ashamed. He is not ashamed to call you
brethren. He is not ashamed to take his
arm and to put it over your shoulder and say, this is my brother. That's my brother. I know you're ashamed. I know
I'm ashamed of myself, my sin, my thoughts, my feelings. I am ashamed of my sin. But this is my hope. He is not
ashamed of me. He calls me his brother. Calls
me his brother. Saying, and listen, Paul quotes
the very text we're in. I will declare thy name unto
my brethren in the midst of the assembly. Behold then, this morning,
right now, behold the captain of your salvation. Behold the captain of your salvation.
Jesus was made flesh that he should die and suffer and bring
many sons unto glory. And by His perfect offering for
sin, He should make salvation perfect. Perfect for all of His elect. The Apostle later in Hebrews
chapter 10 speaks of that triumph, speaks of that victory, when
he said this, that He hath perfected forever. them that are sanctified." Who
perfected them that are sanctified? Who? Did they perfect themselves? Believer, are you trying to perfect
yourself? Impossible! We're not trying to perfect ourselves.
We want to honor Him and magnify His name. We don't want to bring
reproach unto His name. But we know this, that all our
perfection is by the work of Christ. He hath perfected. How long are you perfected? Forever. Them that He made holy. That
word sanctified means holy. You know, to worship God, you've
got to be holy. You must be holy. In the law, you remember those
prophets, those priests and everything, they went through many ceremonies
and they were to sanctify themselves by ceremony. Now we know this,
that none of those blood or those washings or anything they did
made them holy. We know even some of those priests
were unholy priests that did all those things, right? What
about the sons of Eli? Remember those two who offered
that strange fire before the Lord? They sanctified themselves.
But I tell you this, they weren't holy. See, all those washings were
just patterns and pictures. But the Scripture says, "...for
both he that sanctifieth and they that are sanctified are
unified." We're one with Him. one with Christ. Therefore, all
who are sanctified, made holy by the sufferings of Christ,
which holiness comes by the experience of grace in the new birth by
the Holy Spirit, This is how this holiness is transferred
to us. It was ours in Christ when He
did it, but now by the Spirit of God is ours by experience. The grace of God has come upon
us and we have been born again of the Spirit. And this holiness
now is ours by impartation of the Spirit. It's been given to
us in the new birth. This morning as I declare the
gospel of Jesus Christ unto you, the gospel of His suffering,
the gospel of His death, and His resurrection. I know this, I don't have any
power to give you faith. Now faith is the evidence. Faith is the evidence of our
spiritual birth. You're not going to be able to
look in the mirror and find any evidence of spiritual birth.
Not in this old man, not in your deeds. Matter of fact, you're
going to be... The more you grow in grace, the more wicked your
sin appears to you. Now, it was always wicked. But
now, then, as you grow, it becomes more loathsome to you than it
was before. How do we know that we've been
born again? Faith is the evidence. Faith is the evidence of grace. But I know this, I can't give
you faith. And I also know this, except
Christ give you faith, you'll never have it. See, when the Lord says, I will
speak, I will speak to the congregation. I will speak in the... This is
salvation, is that Christ speak to you. If Christ never speaks
to you, you listen. You will never come. You'll never come. Except He call you from the dead,
you will never believe this message. You will never understand it
and never receive it into your hearts. Listen, as many as received
Him, to them gave He the right to be called the sons of God,
which were born. Now how did they receive it?
How did they believe it? Which were born, not of the flesh,
not of blood. In other words, my son will never
believe because he's my son. This faith is not passed down
genetically. Not by the will of the flesh. In other words, we can never
be saved by the will. The will never saves. In other
words, we must be made willing in the day of His power. This
is something God does in us. And not by the will of man. I
cannot will salvation to you as another man. So how then is
this new birth come? It comes by the will of God.
by the power of God. And until then, this thing will
be foolish to you. This message of Christ's suffering,
this message of Christ's death, His burial, His resurrection
will be meaningless. You will not need it. You will
not want it. You will not desire it. Not until
Christ speaks to you. And this is where wicked men
who know little about theology, they say, well, you know, if
God wants me to have it, I'll have it. And then they try to
blame God for their unbelief. You won't do that. If you're
ever saved, it's because of God. If you're lost and you will not
believe, that is all on you. I don't have to reconcile that. That's just plain in the Word
of God. He that believeth and is baptized
shall be saved, he that believeth not shall be damned. Now you
go deal with God. You don't like it? I can't help
you. I can't help you. The natural
man receiveth not the things of God, for they are foolishness
unto him. Why will you not believe? Because
these things are foolishness to you. Neither can he know them because
he's spiritually judged. You don't want it and you can't
get it. This is what man is by nature. He is dead. Dead. Dead. Plucked up by the roots. dead. And except Christ come and speak
to your heart you will never come to Him. But to come to Him is a miracle
of grace. Do you believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ? I ask you not to worry or be
concerned about others. I ask you to ask your own soul. Do you believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ? Have you heard of His suffering
for sin? Of His perfect redemption? Have
you confessed the vileness of your own nature and hopelessness
to contribute anything to the salvation of your soul? Have
you fled to Christ for refuge and laid hold of Him? The only
offering for sin that pleased God, the only righteousness that
God will accept to us who believe To us who believe, we know this,
it is because Christ spoke to us. You see, when He speaks of
His glory and His work to our heart, guess what? We praise
God. Isn't that what it says back
in your text? Look at that. When He speaks and He declares the
name of God into the congregation, what happens? You that fear the
Lord, what? Praise Him. All you seed of Jacob,
glorify Him. Consider this, that the Son of
God, the risen sovereign Lord over all flesh, He calls us His
brother. Have you considered that? Have you considered that great
and glorious thing, that God is our Father? You know, no other
religion does that. Calls God their Father. Most religions have God at a
great distance. Their God is so far and so vast,
so distant, or much like themselves. So there's no distinction between
their God and themselves. But consider that our God, who
is the greatest, is our Father. Our Father. Therefore now are
we the sons of God. You believe on Christ, you listen.
You're the sons of God. Heirs of God. Join heirs with
Christ. And we all do what? Praise God
for it. We praise God. We give glory
to God. Now false religion of this age,
they give glory to themselves. They split the difference. They
say, well, we give glory to God. Yeah, but you also give glory
to yourself. You give glory to your works.
These are such people who wrongly suppose that the salvation is
by their righteousness, or by their obedience, or comes by
their free will. In other words, they are robbing
God of His glory. To believe such is to rob God
of His glory. And God says, I am the Lord,
that's my name, and my glory will I not give to another. But we who are sinners by nature,
rebels by choice, we confess this. You who believe, tell me
if this is not so with you. In my flesh dwelleth no good
thing. That's me. That's me. Who shall deliver me from the
body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ
my Lord. There is therefore now no condemnation
to us who are in Christ Jesus. Our salvation is of the Lord. And now behold the text. Go back
to your text. And see the cause of this salvation. See the cause of this great salvation. The grounds on which sinners
are made the sons of God. That's by no means a product
of our works or our will, but rather this, the doing and dying
of Christ. The grounds by which I may claim
brotherhood with Christ, the grounds by which I may claim
to be a son of God, is not based in any measure upon me. It is
based solely upon the measure, the doing and the dying of Christ. Completely. Look at that in verse
24. This is the cause of our brotherhood
of him speaking. For he hath not despised nor
abhorred the affliction of the afflicted. The object of our
praise and glory is the Lord. who is surely worthy by nature
of our praise, but yet a greater reason is given here for the
praise of God. For, because of the affliction
of the afflicted." This is the object of our praise this morning.
The affliction of the afflicted. So then we confess, as saints,
we know this, we are often afflicted. Isn't that right? You who are
saints, you're afflicted. We're often cast down. We often
suffer great pain. We suffer sorrow. We are afflicted
and weak in this mortal flesh with all types of sickness and
pain. We are afflicted by the world
that hates us, despises our gospel and our Lord. We are oppressed
by Satan And yes, even our own flesh is in constant warfare
with us. We are afflicted. We confess,
I am an afflicted man. David was an afflicted man. No
doubt David wrote this surely out of his affliction. He had
afflictions and this is the cause of him writing this initially. But we know this, that no amount
of earthly affliction could ever save our soul. I don't care if you suffer the
greatest pains that a man could endure on the face of God's earth,
none of your suffering can put away your sin. None of it. We recognize that. None of our
suffering could give us righteousness. I just read this last night.
a young woman who was on drugs and really messed up. She had
been reading the Bible while she's on these drugs. And she
went into the church, and she thought within her mind, something
came to her mind, no doubt the enemy of man's souls came to
her mind, and gave her this thought, that she must pluck out her eyes
for God. And this woman actually did it. She plucked out her own eyes. Now what did that accomplish? Nothing. Nothing. It did nothing. God was not pleased
with her offering. And I don't care what you've
got to offer. What are you offering? Anybody offering anything to
God? I don't care what it is. It's not enough. It's not perfect. It's not going to be acceptable
unto God for sin. You're not going to be offered
enough to pay for sin. See that God does not demand
of man an offering of carnal sacrifices which could never
take away sin. You remember those priests? God
commanded that law of sacrifices and yet what did Paul say in
Romans and Hebrews chapter 10? He said all of that, all of that
was only a figure and none of those took away any sin. He said
neither by the blood of bulls or goats could ever take away
sin. Therefore, God does not require
the best efforts or the best sacrifices of the flesh. Let
me tell you what God requires. God requires a perfect offering. And you know what your offering
is all mixed with? Sin. Our righteousnesses are as filthy
rags, the Scripture says. All have sinned and come short
of the glory of God. So then the affliction of the
saints is not in any way worthy of acceptance with God. But I'll tell you the one who
is afflicted here in our text is Jesus Christ. He is the one
afflicted. The affliction of the afflicted. Christ is the afflicted. He is
the one that said, My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? Now the Son of God, one with
the Father, one with the Spirit, in will, in power, authority,
and all divine attributes. Yet the purpose and work of the
Father was this, the election of grace. You see, God in the
Trinity of His persons is responsible for the salvation of His people.
The work of the Father was this, that He should choose a people
for Himself. The Father, blessed be the God
and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with
all spiritual blessings in heavenly places, according as He, the
Father, hath chosen us in Christ before the foundation of the
world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him.
That's the Father's work. The Father's work was to choose
His people. But the work of the Son, the
work of the Son was to die for the elect. That they should be
holy without blame before Him in love, having predestinated
them according to the adoption of children, listen,
by Jesus Christ. You see, God purposed that it
was by Jesus that these people should be sons and holy sons.
And so the work of the Son was this, that He should come and
die for His people. You see, the elect were like
everybody else. We were no different. The sons of Adam, we were sons
of Adam's race. We were unholy and righteous. Unrighteous. Therefore, Christ
must have come to remove our sins. See, a man can't be holy
and have sin. Can't do it. Can't be holy except
your sins be removed. Taken from you. And this was the promise of God,
as far as the East is from the West, so far hath He removed
our sins from us. Therefore, when Jesus was made
flesh, He was made a man so as to represent His people. Thus the Scripture declares His
obedience to have obtained righteousness for all of His elect, It says
this, but now the righteousness of God without the law is manifest,
being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness
of God which is by the faith of Jesus Christ unto all and
upon all them that believe. And it is this righteousness
that God imputes and imparts to every believer in the new
nature But what of our sins? Christ obtained your righteousness
by His obedience. But what of your sins? In order
for you to be accepted, your sins must be removed from you. They must be taken from you. For all have sinned and come
short of the glory of God. Now listen to how He did it.
Being justified freely by His grace. You see, this is why He
did it. He did it by grace. He didn't
do it by merit. He did it by grace. But how did
He do it? Through the redemption that is
in Christ. What is redemption? This is Redeemer's
Grace Church. What is a Redeemer? What does
it mean to be redeemed? We don't use that word. Usually
when I go to the bank, I have to spell it. People don't even
know what Redeemer is. It's one that buys, one that
redeems, one that has been held captive. He pays the ransom.
He redeems. He pays a price. You see, we
were captives of sin and God's justice, and Christ came to redeem,
to buy us by His own precious blood. The price was the propitiation,
the death, His blood. And how is this then applied
to us through faith? Faith in His blood. You know
who at first believed in Christ's blood? God did. God was the first
to trust Christ's blood. He believed and trusted in the
blood of the Son to remove your sin. Even so, we believe in the
blood of Christ to remove our sin. to declare His righteousness,
that He might be just and the justifier of them which believe
in Jesus. So then we are redeemed from
sin, atoned only by the sacrifice of Christ. We are made righteous
and justified before God, for our sins were passed from us. Question, where do they go? Where did they go? All together, an important question. Did God just cover His eyes and
say, okay, I forgive you, I'm just not going to... I'm going
to pretend that you didn't do that. We do that with our children.
We see them do something wrong, we don't want to take the time
to correct them, so what do we do? We say, I didn't even see
it. No, that's not how God deals with things. God is holy. God
is just. God is righteous. So what did
He do with your sins? He took them and imputed them
to Christ. That's what He did with them. He passed our sins from us to
Christ. Therefore, we have this scripture
in 2 Corinthians. 2 Corinthians. The Apostle Paul
makes it plain where our sins went. 2 Corinthians chapter 5 and verse 21. Let's read verse 19, "...to wit,
that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself." Listen,
"...not imputing their trespasses to them." Where'd they go? Verse
21, "...for He hath made Him to be sin for us." That's where
they went. Oh, the glory of this. Your sin
didn't go unpunished. The glory of it is your sin was
punished. Just not in you. This is where we get the doctrine
of substitution. That God made Him to be sin for
us. Who knew no sin? You and I don't understand that.
We can't enter into that. Why? Because all we are is sin. Okay? So we don't know what it's
like to be without sin. Yet, he was without sin. Even when he was made sin, he
still did no sin. Isn't that right? He still trusted
God completely. But yet he was made sin. And
the justice of God that could not forgive sin, punished sin. Where? In Christ Jesus. Therefore He said, My God, My
God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? You know, a definition of hell,
you know, it's a good one. To be without God's mercy. To
absolutely, completely be devoid of God's mercy and grace. There is not one human being
living in this world that has ever experienced complete and
utter forsaking of mercies. If you have some breath left
in you, you have some mercy. As I get older, your body falls
apart, right? when that arm or back or whatever
trouble it is, hurts. Do you consider the other 600
and other 500 plus muscles that don't hurt? Why? Mercies! You have some mercy
that not everything hurts. Mercies! You have some mercies.
But hell is a place without mercy. Full justice and only justice. And this is exactly what Christ
experienced when He had our sins imputed to Him. Full justice
without mercy. Full justice without mercy. He was the propitiation for our
sins. And in our nature, He suffered
as no man suffered. I like this in Lamentations. It speaks again of Christ and
He says, I am the man that has seen affliction by the rod of
His wrath. Who else but Christ has seen
the full wrath of God? Christ has seen the full measure
of God's wrath for all our sins. Therefore he cries unto God in
his affliction, save me, help me. Behold the afflicted is Christ. He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquity.
The chastisement of our peace was upon him. And listen, by
his strife we are what? Healed. Healed. It pleased God
to bruise him, to put him to grief. to make his soul an offering
for sin. He shall see his seed, he shall
prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in
his hands. I will declare thy name among my brethren. You see, Christ knew this, though
he should suffer and die for our sins, I will rise from the
dead. I will preach to my people. They will praise God. They will glorify God. You see, believer, our God who
is just, freely justifies us, and justly justifies us by the
offering of His Son. And what was the verdict? The
verdict was that sin is gone. Sin is gone. God is pleased. God is pleased. Therefore, we who believe on
Him, who have faith in His blood, we praise and glorify God, because
His blood has forever satisfied God in our behalf. His blood has done that. The
affliction of the afflicted. Who's the afflicted? Christ is.
What is His affliction? His affliction was our sin. What
was the end? I will preach unto my people. They will hear, and they will
believe, and they will be received into glory. I'm going to close
with this. Go to Psalm 69, which is a parallel to this. If you
want to see a parallel passage, this would be it in Psalm 69. This is, again, the Lord Jesus
Christ speaking here. Listen in verse 29. He says, "...but I am poor and
sorrowful. Let thy salvation, O God, set
me up on high." Who else is that? Who is that? It's Christ. I'm
poor and sorrowful. But you're going to set me on
high. And listen, as the result of this, I will praise the name
of God with a song. I will magnify Him with thanksgiving. This also shall please the Lord
better than an ox or a bullock that hath horns and hooves. And
listen, the humble shall see this and be glad. And your heart
shall live that seeks the Lord. For the Lord heareth the poor
and the despised, and despiseth not his prisoners." Are you not glad to be a prisoner
of Christ? I would rather be a prisoner
of Christ than a king of the world. Why? Because I shall live forever. I shall live forever. How do
you know? Because my sin is gone. It's
gone. It's gone. Christ has paid it. God hath not despised or abhorred
the affliction of the afflicted. But rather He heard him and did
not hide His face from him. Believer, consider this. Because God always hears Christ. And Christ always pleads for
you. You can be sure of this. You're safe. All is well. Why? Because he hath not abhorred
the affliction of the afflicted. May God bless us and give us
grace to understand. To see the grounds of our acceptance
is not flimsy, it's sure, it's solid. It's Christ. It's Christ. The affliction of the afflicted.
Pray God bless us to you.